Church of St Michael and All Angels

Church of St Michael and All Angels

This parish church was built in 1872-3 in the Early Decorated style by architect J. Piers St Aubyn. It was commissioned by Arthur Pryor Esq. of Hylands House.

The church is constructed in yellow stock brick with stone and red brick dressings. The interior walls feature red brick diaper work. The spire is built in Doulting stone and the roofs are tiled.

The plan comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a south porch, north and south transepts (the north transept houses the organ and the south transept serves as the vestry), and a western tower with a tall octagonal broach spire.

Externally, the gable roofs have cresting. All elevations feature shouldered half and angle buttresses, bands and voussoirs of red brick dressings, and pointed arch windows with bar tracery, trefoil and crocketed details and leaded lights. The north and south elevations have red brick dentil cornices. The boiler room is situated near the south transept, and a 20th-century toilet block occupies the angle between the transept and chancel; both are sympathetically executed in stock brick.

The tower rises in three stages and is surmounted by a smooth stone spire; together they reach a height of 131 feet. Each stage is demarcated by stone string courses and shouldered angle buttresses. The west elevation has a ground-floor window with intersecting tracery and a stone surround. The third stage (belfry) features two-light pointed arch windows with crocketed tracery and louvres at each elevation, with a dentil cornice above. The octagonal pinnacles have louvred bases at each corner of the spire, which includes two sets of louvred openings with moulded stone details. The south porch employs the same detailing as the rest of the church; the deeply moulded entrance has a late 20th-century door.

Inside, the nave, chancel and aisles display red brick diapering to the walls and pegged, arch-braced roofs in pine with pairs of windbraces on each pitch. The tall nave has arcades of round columns with deeply moulded capitals and bases. The chancel arch to the east is supported by three engaged columns on each side, with moulded capitals and bases.

The chancel is elaborately tiled and features a reredos of opus sectile depicting Christ and Ministering Angels, designed by H. Burrow of Powell and Sons in 1874. Above it is an east window showing the risen Christ by Clayton and Bell, flanked by two mosaic roundels containing the abbreviated name of Jesus Christ in Greek. The richly carved stone and marble sedilia and piscina are set on the south wall.

The organ chamber occupies the north transept, framed by a moulded stone arch. The arched entrance to the south transept (vestry) has been blocked. The west end contains late 20th-century facilities and the tower has a glazed screen at the ground and first stages.

The stone and marble font has been repositioned near the chancel, and the carved pulpit is contemporary with the church's construction. A bronze memorial plaque of 1908 to Arthur Pryor is mounted on the north aisle wall, with other memorial plaques attached to the south wall of the south aisle.