Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a fine medieval town church with origins in the 12th and 13th centuries, enlarged in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was extensively restored by John Loughborough Pearson in 1859–60, and further restored in 1866–7 and 1886.

Materials and Construction

The church is built of flint rubble with some Roman brick and pudding stone, with dressings of clunch and Bath stone. The roofs are covered with tile, slate and lead, and the spire is shingled.

Layout

The church consists of a chancel with south chapel, north transeptal chapel and north-east vestry. The nave has north and south aisles that extend to flank the west tower, with north and south porches.

Exterior

The exterior, particularly of the nave, is largely a creation of the 19th-century restorations and rebuilding. Almost all the windows are replacements in a free Geometric style of what were originally 16th-century windows. The windows at the west ends of the aisles are particularly interesting, with four trefoils forming a cross in a circle. The north and south aisles have pitched roofs that almost hide the small 19th-century clerestory, replacing a medieval arrangement of low-pitched roofs with embattled parapets and a much more prominent clerestory. Both aisles have brick dressings and decorative banding around the windows and at their west ends. The south porch has a pitched roof and replaces a boxier 16th-century porch. The north porch is also 19th century. The south aisle ends flush with the west face of the tower, while the north aisle is shorter but has a single-storey vestry that also brings it level with the tower.

The three-stage west tower retains its 13th-century appearance, although it was restored in the 19th century and the presence of 17th-century brick in the upper quoins also testifies to earlier restoration or rebuilding. It has a tall, shingled broach spire. There is a single lancet in the tower west face, single north and south lancets in the stage above, and pairs of lancets topped by a row of small round windows below the spire.

The east end of the church is less heavily rebuilt than the nave. The 14th-century north-east vestry is of two storeys and retains an embattled parapet. The south chapel is 16th century and retains its low-pitched roof and plain parapet. The south windows are 16th century, heavily restored, with uncusped lights. There is a polygonal rood stair turret between the south chapel and south aisle. Windows of the north chapel were reset during the restoration. The south chapel retains its three-light 16th-century windows.

Interior

The interior retains much more medieval fabric than the outside. The three-bay north and south nave arcades are 13th century and have chamfered orders on octagonal and round piers. The tower arch is also 13th century and of similar design to the arcades. The chancel arch was rebuilt in the 19th century in an Early English style with the inner order on short corbelled shafts and the outer on nook shafts, but the chancel itself has many medieval features. There is a heavily reworked 14th-century door from the chancel into the north vestry. The arch from the chancel into the north chapel is late 14th or 15th century and has two chamfered orders on polygonal moulded corbels. The two-bay arcade into the south chapel is 16th century and has moulded four-centred arches on a quatrefoil pier. The two-bay arcade between the two parts of the north chapel is 19th century.

The roofs of the north and south chapels and the north-east vestry are particularly notable. That in the vestry has a moulded, probably 15th-century wall plate. The southern part of the north chapel roof is 16th century and has a carved boss of St Michael and the Dragon, now largely hidden by the organ. The northern part of the chapel has a 19th-century roof. The south chapel roof has heavily moulded and carved principal timbers and rafters, and seven carved bosses including the initials MR, an IHS monogram and the arms of the Grocers' Company. The nave and aisles have steeply pitched 19th-century roofs with arched braces.

Fittings and Furnishings

The church was entirely refurnished in the 19th century. The mid-19th-century font is in an Early English style with a quatrefoil bowl decorated with bands of carved foliage standing on clusters of shafts. There is a piscina of about 1530 in the south chapel with a depressed rounded head and a matching recess in the east wall that includes a drain at its north end.

The church contains some good 19th and 20th-century glass. There are a number of windows by Clayton and Bell, including the east window of about 1869, three windows in the south chapel of 1886 and 1921, and the east window of the north chapel of about 1889. Also in the south chapel are angel musicians by Hardman, about 1880.

There is a monument to John Hawkins, died 1633, and his sons John and Abraham, died 1644, by Francis Grigs. Of marble, it has Doric pilasters carrying a rich entablature. A brass commemorates Samuel Collins, died 1670, 'Principal Physician to ye great Czar or Emperor of Russia'.

Historical Development

Braintree as a place is mentioned in the Domesday Book of the late 11th century, but the church itself is not listed, although this does not necessarily mean that there was not a church there at that time. The double square plan of the nave and the use of Roman brick in the chancel, however, suggests that the present church was built in the 12th century. Braintree was an ancient and prosperous market town, and the church was enlarged in the 13th and 14th centuries. The nave and chancel are 12th century in origin. The north and south aisles and the west tower were added about 1240. The north-east vestry was added in the late 14th century, and the north chapel built between it and the north aisle about 1400. The south aisle was widened and lengthened to the west in the 15th century, and the south chapel was built about 1530, at which time the north aisle was widened and an upper floor inserted in the north-east vestry. The clerestory was also added or refenestrated in the 16th century, and most of the rest of the church was given new windows. The extensive rebuilding of the church in the early 16th century testifies to the particular prosperity brought to the town by the cloth trade in that period.

The church fell into disrepair in the early 19th century as a result of a well-publicised conflict over the payment of church rates—taxes which were used to support the church fabric. Between 1834 and 1853, a large number of local non-Conformists in Braintree refused to pay the rates on the grounds that they did not use the parish church. This was part of a larger national dispute about church rates, which were finally abolished in 1868.

The church was heavily restored in the mid-19th century, beginning with the restoration of the tower and spire and the rebuilding of the north aisle by John Loughborough Pearson in 1859–60. The south aisle was restored in 1866–7 by Frederic Chancellor, who also built the north porch and replaced much of the 16th-century work, including the south porch, clerestory and almost all of the windows. The north chapel was widened in 1886 by Ernest Geldart to form an organ chamber, and a choir vestry was added at the west end of the north aisle in 1894.

A notable feature of the restoration of St Michael's is the extent to which the church was rebuilt and older material replaced with something wholly new. The ruthless removal of features not deemed to be of the correct medieval period—in this case the removal of so much 16th-century Tudor fabric and its replacement with 13th-century work—was typical of church restoration in the mid-19th century. Later restorers were more sympathetic to all periods of a building's history.