Church Of St Michael

CHURCH OF ST MICHAEL, GREAT COMBERTON

A parish church of the 12th to 15th centuries, restored in 1861-62 by George Gilbert Scott. The building is constructed in freestone and rubble limestone with tile roofs.

The church comprises a nave with a lower chancel, an embraced west tower, and a north vestry. The Perpendicular west tower rises in three stages with angle buttresses in the lower stage, an embattled parapet and pinnacles. The west doorway has weathered head stops and a later Gothic ribbed door. Above it is a 2-light west window, with a clock in the second stage west face and a sundial on the south face. The belfry openings are 2-light square-headed with louvres. The nave shows signs of major rebuilding and has a plinth band beneath the tower. The north and south walls contain square-headed 2-light and 3-light windows. The south wall has an additional 2-light square-headed 15th-century window at the west end. The chancel features large buttresses, a 3-light Decorated east window, and 2-light windows to the south and north. An ashlar projection on the south side houses the organ.

The tower base contains pointed north and south arches with a plastered pointed arch to the nave. Simple imposts suggest a 12th-century date, though they have been altered and plastered over, making interpretation difficult. The nave retains a 14th-century cradle roof. The chancel arch has an inner order on corbels and an outer order on attached half shafts, with a trussed-rafter roof above. A priest's doorway in the north wall, now internal but formerly external, retains an internal drawbar socket and head stops. The nave walls are plastered with boarded wainscot. The chancel walls have been stripped to expose stonework, and contain a re-set 14th-century ogee-headed piscina on the south side of the east wall, though the projecting part of the basin is missing. Floors comprise flagstones and old grave slabs, with raised wooden floors beneath benches.

The Perpendicular font has quatrefoils around the bowl and an octagonal stem. Benches of the late 16th or 17th century have plain square-headed ends, some with reed-moulding. The Gothic panelled polygonal pulpit is by Scott, as are the choir stalls with shaped ends and moulded backs incorporating Jacobean panels. The communion rail stands on iron standards with scrollwork brackets. Stained glass is predominantly by Clayton & Bell, dating from 1891-1906. A semi-abstract millennium window in the north nave wall is by Nicola Hopwood of Brockhampton (2000), and the tower south window depicts Saints Francis and George by Reginald Bell (1936).

The core of the nave is early Norman, and the arches at the tower base may be of the same date, though the present tower is Perpendicular. The upper parts of the nave walls date to the 14th century. George Gilbert Scott, the foremost church architect of his era and a prolific restorer of medieval churches, undertook the restoration in 1861-62, rebuilding the chancel and renewing the nave windows. The north vestry and tall chancel arch were added in 1885 by John Cotton, and the organ projection was added in 1890.