Church Of St Michael And All Angels

Church of St Michael and All Angels

Parish church with 12th-century origins, rebuilt in the early 13th century, repaired and altered in the early 15th and early 17th centuries, restored in 1868 and enlarged in 1883. Built of coursed sandstone rubble with some sandstone ashlar refacing, plain tiled roof with parapets at gable ends crowned with cross finials. A timber-framed bell turret with shingled roof sits at the west end. The church has a continuous nave and chancel of roughly five bays, a three-bay south aisle, a north porch, and the bell turret. The architecture is in the Perpendicular style.

Exterior

The nave and chancel feature diagonal buttresses with offsets at the west end. A chamfered plinth runs around the west, south and east elevations, returning around the north elevation and stopping beneath the left jamb of the second window. A moulded eaves cornice runs along the roofline.

The west wall appears to be of 12th-century masonry and contains a widened round-headed central window and two loopholes in the gable apex. The remaining fabric dates to the early 13th century. The north elevation has an early 15th-century square-headed three-light and two-light window with ogee-arched and cusped lights, and at the easternmost end is an early 13th-century lancet. The east gable end contains a three-light window with a two-centred head. Reset in the apex is a projecting semicircular date stone carved in the form of a cowled head with the date "1625" inscribed beneath, referring to general repairs of that time and probably the east window. At the east end of the south elevation is an unusual window of paired, cusped rectangular lights set near the outside face of the wall, with a row of four square openings above pierced with quatrefoils, possibly dating to the early 14th century. At the west end of the south elevation is a four-light late 19th-century window, square-headed with cusped, ogee-arched lights.

The south aisle was added in 1883 and occupies the space between the two windows mentioned above. It has three bays with a separate roof and parapets at gable ends with a moulded eaves cornice. The south elevation has a central three-light window flanked by two two-light windows, all of similar design to the early 15th-century windows in the north elevation. At the east gable end is a narrow doorway with pointed arch, and the west gable end has a loophole in the apex.

The north porch dates to the early 15th century and is situated at the right end of the north elevation. It is gabled and timber-framed with rendered infill on a coursed sandstone rubble plinth, a plain tiled roof and scalloped bargeboards. Long, rectangular panels in the side walls contain paired, cusped lancets in the central panels. The doorway has a plain four-centred arch.

The bell turret at the west end of the nave is square-based with weatherboarded sides. It has paired, rectangular louvred openings on the lower part of the north and south sides and a blind, traceried frieze beneath the eaves consisting of one row of cusped ogee-arched panels with a row of round-lobed quatrefoil panels above. It is topped with a shingled, pyramidal roof with swept eaves, a ball finial and weathervane.

Interior

The south aisle features a three-bay double wooden arcade of three pairs of parallel pointed arches with a moulded cornice above, supported on two pairs of intermediate octagonal columns with moulded capitals and bases and on pairs of stone corbels at each end. The bell turret base sits on a framework of four large posts jointed by two arch-braced tie beams, all chamfered.

Late 19th-century wagon roofs run above the nave, decorated above the altar with bosses of fleur-de-lys and rosette design. The furnishings are late 19th century and include altar rails, pulpit, pews and an octagonal font on a square base. A 18th-century parish chest is in the south aisle.

Memorials

The north wall contains several memorials. A mid-18th-century memorial commemorates Thomas Wood, who died in 1749, and his wife, who died in 1745. A late 17th-century memorial with a plaque flanked by pilasters with skull capitals and a broken pediment containing a coat of arms commemorates Thomas Tomkyns, who died in 1675. Between these is a late 18th-century memorial to Jane West, who died in 1793, by W Stephens. Jane West erected a tablet at the north-east end of the church to her first husband, the Reverend William Chapeau, who died in 1776, which also commemorates her brothers. Opposite, at the south-east end, is a memorial to her parents, Sheldon Stephens, a former rector of Martin Hussingtree and Hindlip who died in 1779, and his wife Mary, who died in 1781. To the right is a small oval cartouche on a skull corbel to Edward Wheeler, who died in 1784. At the south-west end of the church is the Williams family memorial, an early 19th-century large convex oval cartouche surmounted by a coat of arms. An early 19th-century memorial in the south aisle commemorates John Pigott, who died in 1828, and his wife Elizabeth, who died in 1839. Late 19th-century stained glass is present in the east and west end windows.