Church Of St Michael

LODDINGTON SK 70 SE LODDINGTON LANE (West Side)

5/51 Church of St. Michael (Previously listed as Church of 29.12.66 St Michael and All Angels)

II*

Church. Largely late C13 or early C14 with one earlier doorway, Perpendicular features and some Victorian restoration work. Coursed ironstone rubble with limestone dressings. West Tower, nave with clerestory and two aisles, chancel. Three staged buttressed tower with paired foiled light in west wall and similar though more ornate lights to bell chamber. Parapet. Former nave roof line visible against its wall. South aisle with parapet and one Perpendicular window to west, the others earlier. One Y traceried window in south wall and a triple lancet window to the east. One decorated window to south. South doorway in coped gabled Victorian porch, the doorway itself round arched, chamfered with no shafts, and of C12. Round foiled window over the door. Perpendicular clerestory with paired square headed lights and stilted hood moulds. Chancel has parapet and two Decorated south windows, paired trefoiled lights, flanking a priest's door. East window is Victorian of 3-lights. North blank. North aisle is buttressed and has parapet and Perpendicular windows, ogee - arched lights in square heads, and a doorway with double chamfered arch, and hood mould with corbel heads.

Inside, C13 tower arch, narrow and steeply arched, triple chamfered with two rounded shafts and roll moulded abaci, and outer hood mould with corbel heads. Nave arcade of three bays, the south probably the earlier, c1300. Octagonal responds to western bay, then a piece of earlier wall before two further bays with a wide octagonal pier. Roll moulded capital and abaci. Double chamfered arches, with hood moulds. North arcade a similar design, but the piers more slender. Nave roof may be partially Perpendicular, though one tie beam is dated 1777. Tie beam and king post construction, the ties supported by struts springing from corbel heads, and with bosses beneath each king post. Small 2-centred arched piscina in south aisle, with fluted drain. Triple chamfered chancel arch supported on corbel heads rather than piers, and Victorian wood screen of finely wrought tracery; three paired lights with ogee pinnacles within, above blank traceried panels to either side of central archway. Small ogee piscina to south of chancel, aumbry to north. Ornately carved Victorian wood altar rails. Stone Victorian reredos.

Fragments of medieval glass in south window to chancel with floral and emblematic motifs, and one Bishop's head. Jacobean pulpit with two tiers of round arched blank arcading. Font may be Early English, round with no differentiation between base and bowl and recessed lancet decoration. Arms of Queen Victoria in north aisle and one hatchment in south aisle.

Listing NGR: SK7862402003