Church Of St Michael And All Angels

The Church of St Michael and All Angels is a parish church that was entirely rebuilt in the late 19th century by the Reverend Whitwell Elwin, who was the rector of Booton from around 1850 to 1900. The church is constructed from flint with limestone dressings and features steeply pitched plain tiled roofs. It has twin diagonally-set west towers, a nave, a chancel, a north porch, and a south vestry, all designed in an eccentric French Gothic style. The window tracery is generally geometric, and the bays are divided by staged buttresses topped with crocketted pinnacles. The gables are parapetted and coped, adorned with elaborate crocketted pinnacles, particularly the west gable which has three tiers of blank arcading. The west towers feature elongated blank arcading in their lower stages, topped with a pierced frieze and crocketted corner pinnacles. The tall sound openings have ogival heads. Moulded strings and eaves are made of limestone, and there is a pierced stone eaves parapet on the chancel. Set-back buttresses are located at the corners of the nave and chancel. The priest's door in the south wall of the chancel has an arch of five orders and an ogival crocketted hood, topped with a square label and quatrefoiled spandrels. Above the doorway is an elaborately-carved niche on clustered shafts. There is a fine west doorway and window situated between the towers. Inside the north porch, set into the east wall, is a notable 14th-century Virgin and Child (headless) that was discovered during Elwin's rebuilding works. The interior features a spherical triangular opening above the chancel arch, a false hammer-beam roof over the chancel with arch-braces on wall-shafts, and an angel hammer-beam roof over the nave with wall-posts on corbels featuring stiff-leaf carving. The nave walls are lined with linenfold dado panelling, and there is good 19th-century glass in both the nave and chancel, along with a well-crafted 19th-century pulpit and fittings.