Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a church dating back to the 14th century, with a 15th-century tower and a 16th-century porch. It underwent extensive restoration in 1862 by Sir G G Scott, followed by additions and alterations in 1888 by St Aubyn and Wadling for Captain Hugh Berners.

The tower is constructed of rubble flint and septaria with ashlar dressings, featuring renewed flushwork battlements. The rest of the building is primarily knapped flint with ashlar dressings, except for the porch, which is made of orange brick in English bond with dark brick diapering. Plain tile roofs cover the building. The architecture is in the Perpendicular style.

The west tower has a two-stage design with diagonal off-set buttresses. The west window has five lights and Perpendicular tracery with restored mullions. The upper stage includes a two-light Tudor-arched belfry opening and a single-light window. A stair turret is positioned to the north. Decorative features include a string course with fleurons, angle gargoyles, and a battlement with crocketed pinnacles. The south porch has diagonal off-set buttresses and two-light windows with Y-tracery under hoodmolds. A Tudor-arched entrance is topped by a blank panel.

The south aisle features a four-light 19th-century window. The former chancel now acts as a south aisle, and houses a priest’s door and two 19th-century windows. The 19th-century nave, chancel, and vestry contain two and three-light Perpendicular style windows. A foundation stone set into the north side of the chancel commemorates Hugh Berners and the date of 1888. The east end of the chancel features a band of flushwork below a five-light Perpendicular style window.

Inside the porch are brattished wall plates, cambered moulded tie beams on short posts supported by carved leaf corbels with arch braces and ornamented spandrels. The interior showcases moulded beams and chamfered joists, a pointed entrance with continuously-moulded jambs, and a tall tower arch. A 19th-century four-bay arcade is supported by cylindrical piers. The nave and aisle have a crown-post roof, while the chancel features a hammer beam roof. A 15th-century octagonal font sits on a base with supporting lions and panels depicting alternating lions and angels, covered by a 19th-century Gothic style cover. A piscina is located in the south chapel. Additional 19th-century furnishings include a pulpit, rood screen and canopied stone sedilia by Thomas Earp. The vestry contains a wall monument featuring a broken segmental pediment with a hatchment on Corinthian columns, and a plaque with a Latin inscription to Phillip Bacon of Shrubland, who died in 1635. A bust of the Ven. Henry Denny Berners (1801-1834), sculpted by R Westmacott Jun. in 1839, is also present.