Church Of St Michael

1. 5253 HIGH STREET (South Side)

Church of St Michael (formerly listed under Windhill) TL 4821 SE:3/40 18.10.49

I

1. Principally early C15, flint with stone dressings. Upper stage of tower 1812, brick and stone dressings; lead spire. Embattled nave and side aisles with buttressed walls, rich perpendicular tracery and projecting porches north and south. C19 chancel clerestorey and west window. Tower upper storey with 2-light traceried windows and clock on each face, quatrefoiled and crenellated parapet. Interior. High nave arcade of 6 bays with slim, moulded piers. Original nave and aisle timber roofs, tie beams of nave with traceried spandrels on good figures corbels. Choir has 3 lower arcades on north, C19 roof and C15 choir stalls and screed, this with 1885 vaulted canopy. Trefoiled sedilia. 1658 hexagonal pulpit in Jacobean style with feigned perspective panels. C12 purbeck marble font top. Original oak doors in north and south entrances. Upper part of tower converted to study room and ground floor closed by C19 traceried glazed screen. West window by Kempe, 1877. Several early C19 GreekRevival tombs in churchyard. Good example of early C15 church in Hertfordshire, well restored in C19. Dominant landmark in town. (RCHM (1911), 62, 63; Pevsner 2nd Ed Rev (1977) 101-102).

Listing NGR: TL4862321336