Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Michael

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Michael

A Roman Catholic parish church originally built as an Anglican workhouse chapel in 1847, with architect unknown. The building was converted to a Catholic church in 1979. It is constructed of red local brick with Cotswold limestone dressings and slate roofs.

The church is a small rectangular building oriented north-west to south-east, comprising an aisleless nave with a slightly narrower, short square-ended sanctuary, and a western gabled porch added in 1858. A parish centre is attached at right angles toward the south-eastern end, extending southwards (this parish centre is excluded from the listing).

The church stands on a darker brick plinth with dentil brick cogging to the eaves and angle buttresses at the corners. The nave is divided into five bays, each marked by an attached buttress with two offsets. Lancet windows with hoodmoulds and plain stops punctuate the walls. The gable ends are finished with stone kneelers and coped stone verges. The eastern end is surmounted by a stone cross, while the western end features a stone gabled bellcote for one bell. Below the bellcote is a small circular window with elaborately-cusped geometric tracery and a heavily-moulded surround. The western porch has stone kneelers and verges matching the main building, with a gable topped by an exuberant floriated cross. The pointed-arched doorway has two chamfered and moulded orders with run-outs and a hood mould. The label stops are carved as portrait heads of Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and Crown Prince Frederick of Germany, who were married in 1858, the year the porch was constructed. The doors are fitted with iron strap hinges.

The interior porch houses the original entrance doorway, with a hood mould and carved head-stops in the form of medievalising heads of a king and queen.

The nave and chancel have plain plastered walls incised to resemble ashlar. The roof structure consists of A-trusses with king-posts rising from the collars and single purlins. A pointed chancel arch divides the nave from the sanctuary, which has a lower rafter and purlin roof. The east window is a triple lancet with modern stained glass. The timber altar, in a broadly Arts and Crafts style, was brought from a former convent at Newbold Revel near Rugby. Wall-posts in the nave are carried on carved stone corbels with detailed, naturalistic carvings including a green man, male and female heads with foliage, a grapevine, a bird in foliage, and angels.

The church has been furnished with fittings and furnishings brought from other Roman Catholic places of worship in the parish in 1979 and subsequently. The reredos is a carved stone piece with three crocketed gables and a central tabernacle, made by Charles Hansom in 1853 for Campden House, Chipping Campden. The large holy water stoup in the porch, in the form of a kneeling angel, was also made by Charles Hansom in 1853 for the same location. Historic stained glass in two windows on the north wall of the nave depicts the Annunciation and was designed by A W N Pugin and made by Hardman of Birmingham, also originally for Campden House chapel. Modern stained glass in the sanctuary and porch is by Anthony Naylor. On the western end of the north wall are memorials including one to Philip Canning Howard and his wife Alice by the 'mouse man' Thompson of Kilburn, North Yorkshire. The bell is by Taylor of Oxford, dating to circa 1847.