Church Of St Michael

CHURCH OF ST MICHAEL

The Church of St Michael stands on Berechurch Hall Road as a medieval parish church with origins probably in the 11th century or earlier, though it remained a chapel of Holy Trinity, Colchester. The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and tiled roofs.

The church comprises a nave and chancel in one, a north chapel (the Audley Chapel), a south porch, and a west tower.

The west tower is of three stages with a southeast stair turret and embattled parapet, dating to the 14th century. The west window and west door are late 14th century. The bell chamber has east and north windows dating to around 1500, while the south and west windows of this chamber are 14th-century windows that have been reset.

Much of the exterior of the nave and chancel was rebuilt in the 1870s and features decorative stone banding. On the south side, a buttress marks the external division between nave and chancel. The nave has a reset 14th-century south door covered by a 19th-century porch. The nave's south windows are 19th century, with the window east of the porch being notably large in a geometric style. The north nave windows are also 19th century, executed in Decorated style. The chancel's east window has an acutely pointed head with Perpendicular tracery and dates to the early 17th century. The north wall of the Audley chapel was likewise rebuilt in the 1870s with decorative stone banding, and contains a large early 16th-century east window of three lights with brick tracery. A 16th-century brick doorway with continuous mouldings and hood mould is set in the west wall, which has no north windows.

The nave, chancel, and tower have been converted to office space. The Audley chapel retains exceptional features. It contains a very fine 16th-century hammerbeam roof, heavily carved, with emblems of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, dating it to 1509–1533. In the early 17th century, heraldic badges bearing the arms of Audley of Walden were added to the ends of the hammerbeams.

The chapel houses a remarkable set of monuments. The most notable is a large monument to Sir Henry Audley, erected in 1648 during his lifetime, featuring a life-sized white marble effigy in armour reclining on a black and white chest with figures of his five children. Behind stands a large pedimented back-plate with a segmental pediment and heraldic cartouche on pilasters, possibly by Thomas Stanton (died 1674). A fine tablet to Robert Audley (died 1624), possibly by Gerald Christmas, includes an hourglass and skulls.

Later memorials include a tablet to Charlotte White (died 1845) of Berechurch Hall by Joseph Edwards and another to her grandfather Sir Robert Smyth (died 1802), featuring an urn within a classical frame. A monument to Nicholas Tomlinson (died 1847) and his wife Elizabeth (died 1839) has an elaborate Gothic frame by J Browne. Two further monuments by George Lufkin of Colchester are also present.

Additional monuments remain in the courtyard, including a chest tomb for the Ward and Tomlinson families. This tomb commemorates James Ward (died 1806), who sailed with Captain Cook and is said to have been the first to sight the Hawaiian Islands, and his brother-in-law Vice-Admiral Nicolas Tomlinson (died 1847).

The 14th-century tower and various reset 14th-century windows likely stem from a reworking of an earlier medieval church at that date. The north (Audley) chapel was added in the early 16th century, probably in the late 1520s or early 1530s, certainly before 1533. In 1536, Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, was licensed to create a separate rectory at Berechurch, and he may have been responsible for the chapel's construction a few years earlier. Audley entertained Henry VIII at Berechurch in the 1530s, and the chapel may have been built around this time. Early 17th-century work included the addition of heraldic cartouches with the arms of Audley of Walden to the chapel roof and the remaking of the chancel's east window. After damage during the Civil War, repairs were carried out in the late 1640s, coinciding with Sir Henry Audley's erection of his monument. A major restoration took place in 1872 under architect Charles Pertwee, when almost the entire structure except the tower and parts of the Audley chapel was rebuilt, though some earlier features were reused. The south porch was added in 1878.

The parish remained largely agricultural throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the Second World War, large housing estates developed nearby as suburbs of Colchester. As the old church became too small, a new Church of St Margaret was built nearby in 1968–1972. The parish moved to the new church in 1973. St Michael's became redundant in 1975, and the main building was sold for conversion to offices, though the Audley chapel was vested in the Churches Conservation Trust in 1981.