Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

Parish church, dating from the 14th century with earlier elements probably from the 12th century. The building was extensively restored in 1868. It is constructed of coursed sandstone rubble with sandstone dressings and weatherboarding, with roofs of Welsh slate and shingles.

The church comprises an almost continuous two-bay nave and one-bay chancel, with a western bell-turret and south porch. The bell-turret, largely 19th century, is set within the west wall of the nave with weatherboarded and shingled sides and twin bell openings to each side except the east. It supports a broach spire with shingles and a weather cock.

The west elevation has weathered buttresses to each side and a central blocked chamfered doorway with a two-centred head. The north elevation of the nave displays two pairs of two-light windows with ogeed and trefoiled heads, with a weathered buttress beneath the north-east corner of the bell-turret. The chancel has no windows on its north elevation and its roof line is slightly lower than that of the nave. The east window has two restored ogeed and trefoil-headed lights similar to those of the nave. The south elevation has two pairs of ogeed and trefoil-headed lights (one to the chancel and one to the nave), the latter relatively unrestored. Between these windows are a square-headed blocked window and a chamfered blocked priest's door with a round, almost two-centred head. Weathered buttresses stand to the left of the south porch and to the right-hand corner of the chancel.

The south porch is probably 14th century and little restored. It is a two-bay timber structure with four corner posts carrying curved angle struts to cambered ties and straight struts to wall-plates. The front struts form a two-centred arch with a projection from the tie at the apex. The trusses have relatively straight collars and two pairs of curved wind-braces to the lower part of each roof slope. The side walls are set on a 20th-century plinth above which are restored boarded panels and openings divided by three studs on each side. The 19th-century oak two-leaved gates have three open hexagons to the top and curved braces to the bottom. The south doorway, possibly 12th or 13th century, has a semi-circular head and is continuously chamfered.

The interior has a plastered elliptical ceiling. At the junction of nave and chancel are 19th-century curved struts forming a large trefoil head with pendants, supported on a pair of corbels at their lower parts. In the nave is the bottom of a 19th-century king-post rising from a tie beneath the ceiling. Another tie supports the east end of the bell-turret. The 19th-century wall plates are lightly moulded.

The chancel contains stained glass in the east window showing the Marys and Angels at the sepulchre after the Resurrection, commemorating Walter Morris (died 1882), his wife Dorothea (died 1864), and their son Walter (died 1888). The north wall bears a slate and marble monument for Ann Skyrme (died 1835), in the form of a pedimented aedicule with scrolled frieze and acroteria. The south wall displays a marble plaque for Thomas and Emma Phillips, children of the rector, who died aged 11 and 9 of scarlet fever in 1853. Nearby is another plaque for Benjamin, who died in 1849, also a child of the rector Thomas Phillips and his wife Penelope, with the inscription "May our Eternal Almighty and Merciful GOD accept and receive him".

The nave contains a 14th-century font with an octagonal shaft stepped to a square base and circular bowl. The underside of the bowl is octagonal, with four of its faces each bearing a large ball flower. On the west wall is a freestone wall monument partly painted black for William Skyrme (died 1804), with obelisks flanking a central column supporting an urn, and adjacent a black monument for Joyce Skyrme (died 1794) with a weeper in base-relief resting on an urn and the inscription "When such friends part, tis the survivor dies". Beneath are several floor slabs mainly from the mid-17th to early 18th centuries. On the north wall is a black and white marble monument with a small pediment for William Mayos (died 1826), with another similar monument opposite for John Mayos (died 1826).

The church also contains a brass collection plate of circa 1900 with repoussé lettering on the margin reading "The.Lord.loveth.a.cheerful.giver"; an early 17th-century oak communion table with turned legs and lower rails at floor level, with a restored top; a 17th-century oak bench with turned legs and grooved rails; a late 19th-century mahogany harmonium by Esley Organ Company, Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, with crested ends and long fluted candlesticks rising from the base above the manual, accompanied by a contemporary bench with a cast iron frame, mahogany plinth, scrolled ends linked by a long cylindrical rail with central radiating finials; a late 19th-century pine part-octagonal pulpit with integral adjustable bookrest operated by an internal screw and having two rows of square-set quatrefoil panels; and a late 19th-century oak lectern with a shaft enriched by tabernacles and a book-wedge decorated with openwork panels to front, corner finials and cresting.