Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a parish church with medieval origins, undergoing restoration in the early 19th century and again in 1882. The building consists of a nave, chancel, west tower, south transept, and south porch. It is primarily constructed of flint rubble, largely plastered, with freestone dressings. The roofs are slate, featuring parapet gables.

Several elements point to a mid-13th century origin, though the core fabric of the nave and chancel might date back to the 12th century or earlier. A reset 12th-century window head with shallow decorative bands is found low in the chancel wall. The east window is a triple lancet, recessed within a chamfered arch, with contemporary angle buttresses, the inner face being hoodmoulded. Three 13th-century lancet windows are present in the south wall of the chancel and two in the north wall, all with mask-stopped hoodmoulds. A blocked south chancel doorway features round arches one above the other, the upper one glazed with cusping, and has a 13th-century hoodmould, likely a later reworking of an earlier doorway. The north doorway is also 13th-century, its hoodmould connecting with a neighboring window. The late 13th-century transept has a triple-lancet gable window. A good late 13th-century doorway, with hoodmould and shafts, is found in the west wall. A double piscina in the south-east corner is trefoil-headed with nook-shafts having moulded capitals. Two 13th-century lancets appear in the east wall, between which is an early 14th-century image niche, its jambs decorated with dog-teeth; the hoodmould is similarly enriched. A wide arch leading from the nave rises from corbels with carved capitals. The wide chancel arch was largely restored in the early 19th century, retaining circular banded shafts and foliated capitals of 13th-century origin, although the shafts and capitals themselves are 19th-century replacements. Plain 13th-century doorways in the south and north walls are present, the north one being blocked. A 13th-century lancet in the south wall is blocked by a marble slab recording the endowment of Mrs Mary Page (died 1731). A simple, unbuttressed tower with cusped Y-traceried windows was added in the late 13th century.

Two 14th- and 15th-century windows are in the north wall; each has an altered, widely splayed jamb, a product of changes made to earlier Norman windows. A square-headed 15th-century window is found in the south wall. The church boasts a 6-bay hammerbeam roof constructed by a local carpenter in the 15th century; the workmanship is unusually crude. The hammerbeams project only slightly, and the posts are arch braces. The high collars and king posts are unusual, with alternate king posts being octagonal, pendant, and bisecting arch braces which lack collars. The chancel roof was rebuilt in the early 19th century, replicating the design of the nave roof. A wall tablet commemorates Arther Heigham (1787) in the chancel. Two small 17th-century wall tablets are in the transept and one in the nave, alongside three painted hatchments.