Church of St Michael

Church of St Michael

This is a grade II* listed church built in London stock brick with Bath and Portland stone dressings. It originated as a design by Vulliamy, comprising a liturgical west tower with a six-bay aisled and galleried nave, a short sanctuary recess at the east end, and a low undercroft beneath to accommodate the steep slope of the site. Major works in 1879-81 by Street cut back the galleries to form a crossing, inserted a raised choir in the easternmost bay of the old nave, and added a further full bay to the east accommodating an enlarged sanctuary with vestries and a parish room beneath. The eastern ends of the north and south aisles now contain respectively the organ chamber with small sacristy beyond, and the Lady chapel.

The main exterior view is from the north-west. The tower is buttressed in stages to its full height and flanked by buttressed lean-to aisles with large lancets featuring ogee surrounds. The west doorway in the base of the tower is in Perpendicular style with a square hoodmould and enriched spandrels. Above it is a three-light traceried window with ogee surround, followed by the belfry with twin lancet openings and a third lancet above. The octagonal spire is enriched by pinnacles, small flying buttresses and a cross finial. The aisles have two-light windows between stepped buttresses. The east elevation, viewed from the cemetery, is dominated by Street's large five-light window with Perpendicular tracery, which replaced Vulliamy's original Decorated window.

The interior is a single aisled space of seven bays. Tall arcades with plain octagonal piers support a low clerestory and a flat plaster ceiling, renewed after Second World War damage, with shallow ornamental brackets. The aisle ceilings have triangular cast-iron trusses. Raked galleries with tracery fronts extend across the western bay of the nave and through the first four bays of the aisles. The sixth bay is a raised choir with an encaustic-tiled floor, low chancel screens, pulpit and stalls. Slender wall-shafts mark the transition to the eastern sanctuary bay added by Street in 1880-81, distinguished by its clerestory of three-light Perpendicular windows rather than triple lancets, and a pitched ceiling with exposed boarding and heavy moulded tie- and hammer-beams. The east window has an enriched surround with large leafy crockets and a cross finial, flanked by two tiers of canopied niches. The upper wall is richly stencilled in red, green and gold as part of a Temple Moore scheme of 1903.

The fittings mostly belong to Street's 1879-81 reordering and replace the original late-Georgian fittings. The nave pews are plain with moulded top rails and square ends. The octagonal stone font has reliefs of angels alternating with heraldic shields. Low timber screens with blind-traceried fronts mark the entrance to the choir; to the right is an elaborate wooden pulpit originally of 1848. The organ, with carved case and gilded pipework dating from 1885 with several later rebuildings, replaces an earlier instrument in the west gallery. The chancel seating comprises four rows of plain oak choir stalls with simple ogee frontals and a bishop's chair of 1958 by Thompson of Kilburn. Brass altar rails are supported on decorative iron brackets. The east wall has a painted stone reredos flanked by oak panelling installed in 1937 and surmounted by a rich vine-scroll cornice added by Temple Moore in 1903. The niches above contain painted and gilded plaster statues also of 1903 by Moore representing the Greek and Latin Fathers: Saints John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine and Jerome. The south chapel is enclosed by carved openwork screens—that to the chancel of 1905 by Arthur Sharp, that to the aisle of 1906-7 by Moore—and has a carved reredos by Moore with gesso panels of the Crucifixion and Annunciation by Henry Victor Milner.

The east window of 1954 is by Evie Hone and depicts the Last Supper, replacing a war-damaged window of 1880 by Charles Eamer Kempe, fragments of which were reinstalled in the east window of the north aisle. The corresponding window in the south chapel is also by Kempe and depicts Saint Michael and the Dragon. Further windows by various artists include a series in the fourth bay of the south aisle of New and Old Testament scenes designed by Richard Rivington Holmes and made by Lavers and Barraud.

The church contains a number of 18th and early 19th century wall monuments from the original Highgate chapel, including a pair of identical Neoclassical tablets commemorating the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his friend the surgeon James Gillman. Coleridge's reburial at St Michael's in 1961 is recorded on a memorial slab in the centre aisle.