Church Of St Michael

TL 96 NE HUNSTON 2/82 Church of St Michael 15.11.54

-- II*

Parish church, medieval, restored early C19 and 1882. Nave, chancel, west tower, south transept, south porch. Flint rubble: apart from tower almost entirely plastered: freestone dressings. Slated roofs with parapet gables. A number of mid C13 features, but the fabric of nave and chancel may be largely of C12 or earlier. (Reset low in the chancel wall is a C12 window head with bands of shallow decoration). C13 east window: triple lancets recessed within a chamfered outer arch, and contemporary angle buttresses at the eastern corners; hoodmoulded on inner face. 3 C13 windows in south wall of chancel and 2 in north wall: lancets, with inner mask-stopped hoodmoulds. The south chancel doorway (blocked) has round arches one above the other (the upper one glazed with cusping), and with C13 hoodmould - possibly a late C13 remodelling of an earlier doorway. The north doorway is of C13, and its hoodmould links with the adjacent window. Late C13 transept:- a triple-lancet gable window. A good late C13 doorway in the west wall is hoodmoulded and shafted. A double piscina in the south-east corner, trefoil-headed with nook-shafts having moulded capitals. Two C13 lancets in the east wall: between them is an early c14 image niche, the jambs enriched with large and complex dog-teeth: the hoodmould is also enriched. A wide arch leading from the nave rises from corbels with carved capitals. Wide chancel arch, much restored early Cl9 but with circular banded shafts and foliated capitals of C13 origin. The shafts and capitals are C19. Plain C13 doorways in south and north have walls (the latter blocked). A C13 lancet in the south wall is blocked by a marble slab recording, in interesting detail, the endowment of Mrs Mary Page (d.1731). A simple unbuttressed tower with cusped Y-traceried windows was added in late Two windows in north wall, of C14 and C15; each has one altered widely- splayed jamb, no doubt from the preceding Norman windows. A further square- headed C15 window in south wall. A 6-bay hammerbeam roof, of unusually crude workmanship, and probably by a local C15 carpenter: the hammerbeams project only slightly and the posts are in the form of arch braces. The form of the high collars and king posts is unusual: every other truss has the normal arch braced collar, with king post rising to a moulded ridge piece; but alternate king posts are octagonal in form, pendant, and bisect the arch braces which are without their collars. Chancel roof rebuilt early C19, to the same design as in the nave. A wall tablet to Arther Heigham (1787) in the chancel. Two small C17 wall tablets in the transept and another in the nave. 3 painted hatchments.

Listing NGR: TL9758568048