Church Of St Michael

REARSBY

SK 61 SE CHURCH LANE

4/74 Church of St.Michael

1.6.66

GV II*

Parish church. Largely late C13 to early C14. Sandstone and granite rubble with ashlar dressings, low pitched leaded roofs. West tower, nave with clerestory and 2 aisles, chancel. Tower is Perpendicular, white ashlar in banded courses. Buttressed, 2 stages with embattled parapet with gargoyles and corner finials. Paired foiled west window and light to bell chamber. South aisle is a C19 restoration in granite with ashlar dressings including an eaves cornice. Windows are paired cusped lights in the Decorated style, with hood moulds and corbel heads. South porch a shallow gabled Victorian structure with wide archway ornamented with vine scroll and cusps on shafts with foliate corbels. Carved cross motif recessed to each side of it. South doorway also Victorian, a Decorated arch with shafts and leafy capitals. East wall of aisle apparently original sandstone rather than granite rubble. Granite rubble clerestory with paired foiled lights. Chancel is also of sandstone rubble with some granite. A small ogee arched priests door to west and good perpendicular tracery to 3-light north and south windows and 5-light east window. Over the east window 2 blocked 2-centred arched lights. On the east wall, a memorial with inscription on a slate beneath a sandstone broken pediment and shield of arms, to Richard Benskin, d 1756, and Sarah, d 1741. East wall and west bay of north aisle are of granite rubble, the rest sandstone, probably all C19, though the north doorway, with shafts, roll moulding and hoodmould is late C13. Aisle windows are 3-cusped ogee lights in square headed arches.

Inside, thin painted double chamfered tower arch on shafts. Nave of 4 bays with south arcade the earlier and probably late C13. It has round piers with octagonal capitals. The east and west responds are slim columns, that to east has a worn stiff-leaf capital. Single chamfered arches with an outer chamfer or hoodmould also springing from the capitals. North arcade is slightly later, with narrower octagonal piers. Otherwise its detail is very similar. Nave roof is C19: moulded cambered trusses. Piscina in south aisle. Chancel arch is double chamfered and springs from corbels. There is a mid-Victorian openwork wood traceried screen on a stone base which incorporates the ornate stone pulpit to the north. Piscina and reredos in south wall of chancel are late C13, but other features are Perpendicular. Its Victorian roof has moulded trusses with painted bosses.

Font, C13, a rounded basin with 4 clusters of shafts supporting a carved but mutilated rim, and having carved capitals and bases standing free of the central round base.

Listing NGR: SK6511114638