Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael, Warmington

This is a medieval parish church of significant architectural importance, built over several centuries from the 12th to 15th centuries. The building is constructed of regular coursed ironstone with tile roofs, featuring coped gable parapets on the main roof and moulded parapets along the nave and aisles.

The church comprises an aisled nave, chancel, west tower, north and south porches, and north vestry with priest's room. It is designed in the Decorated style with three bays to both the nave and aisles, and three bays to the chancel.

The 12th-century nave forms the earliest component. The late 13th-century south aisle and early to mid-14th-century north aisle, chancel, vestry and priest's room followed. The tower was built during the 14th and 15th centuries.

The chancel features a plinth and sill courses, splayed to the east and moulded to the south, with buttresses bearing offsets. A renewed 4-light east window displays Decorated tracery with an old hood mould containing fragments of head stops. Hood moulds run throughout the building. An ogee-arched priest door with two moulded orders opens from the south side. The south side includes two eastern square-headed windows with cinqfoiled round-arched lights and sunk spandrels, and a narrow 2-light square-headed western window with reticulated tracery.

The main entrance is on the south side, accessed through a south porch with diagonal buttresses and an arch of two hollow-chamfered and moulded orders. Stone benches sit inside the porch. A fine late 13th-century Decorated doorway features many orders of hollow chamfers, roll mouldings and fillets, with a 19th-century studded door fitted with old strap hinges.

The south aisle has a diagonal buttress and splayed plinth at its east end. Its 3-light east window displays bar tracery of three circles. Two 2-light windows to the south side resemble those of the chancel but with roll-moulded mullions. A 2-light western window features cusped Y-tracery, and a 3-light west window displays Geometric tracery with roll-moulded tracery.

The north porch has diagonal buttresses and a doorway of two chamfered orders, with a north doorway of two moulded orders fitted with a 19th-century plank door.

The north aisle has a splayed plinth to the east, with an east angle buttress and west diagonal buttress. Its 3-light east window contains two lancets and a wider shorter lancet with a starred circle. Two ogee-arched 2-light eastern windows on the north side display curvilinear tracery. A western window features Y-tracery, and a 3-light west window contains three trefoiled ogee lights.

The two-storey vestry and priest's room has a splayed plinth, stepped down on the north side. North buttresses rise into crocketed pinnacles flanking the north gable. The east side features a barred moulded square window, possibly formerly mullioned, and a 2-light window above. The north side has a similar square window. The first floor contains a 2-light Decorated window with blind tracery. A north-west re-entrant angle has a stair projection.

The tower comprises three stages with double-splayed plinth and string courses continued across diagonal buttresses to two stages. A west door displays two chamfered and moulded orders, with a 19th-century ribbed door fitted. A Decorated west window of two trefoiled lights occupies the second stage. Two-light Perpendicular bell openings retain old stone louvres. The tower is finished with a cornice and parapet.

Interior features include a plastered chancel with a largely renewed piscina bearing a wide trefoiled ogee arch and triangular shafts with battlements and pinnacles. Three heavily restored sedilia feature cinqfoiled crocketed ogee arches and triangular detached shafts with carved heads, battlements and pinnacles, with gables to left and right.

An ogee north doorway of three moulded orders with hood mould opens to the north. A small ogee lancet to the priest's chamber retains an old iron grille and board shutter. The chancel contains a 19th-century arched braced roof with carved heads and stone corbels, ashlar posts and moulded wallplates, with a chancel arch of two moulded orders with central fillet and simple moulded impost and low responds.

The nave features three-bay arcades. Eastern bays echo the chancel arch design. Other bays are Transitional with circular piers and responds and scalloped capitals. The north arcade has square unmoulded arches with square hood mould and low square pedestals. The south arcade features slightly chamfered arches with much larger and deeper capitals and roll-moulded bases on high square pedestals.

A 19th-century wagon roof with ashlar posts covers the nave. The tower is built slightly into the nave, with a very tall tower arch of two chamfered orders, the outer segmental-pointed and the inner dying into the wall.

The south aisle contains an upper 4-centred east doorway and steps to a former rood loft. Both aisles have 19th-century wagon roofs. The vestry features an east piscina with trefoiled ogee head and hood mould, with stone winder stairs to the priest's chamber fitted with old lattice-backed plank doors at top and bottom. The priest's room contains a plain square-headed former fireplace and a mid to late 19th-century two-bay barrel arched braced roof.

Fittings include a possibly 13th-century font with cylindrical bowl displaying roll moulding and square roll-moulded stem. The lower part of a 15th-century oak screen retains moulded muntins and traceried panels. An 1871 pulpit, 19th-century pews and altar rails, and an encaustic tile sanctuary floor of around 1870 are also present.

Stained glass includes an east window of 1870, and chancel south-east and central windows of around 1889 and 1890. The nave and aisle floors were raised in the late 20th century.