Church Of St Michael And All Angels, Old Royal Military Academy

Church of St Michael and All Angels, Old Royal Military Academy

Originally the chapel to the Royal Military Academy, later serving as the garrison church. The foundation stone was laid in 1902 by Earl Roberts and the building was completed in 1904 to designs by Major Hemming of the Royal Engineers. The church follows a Perpendicular style with a cruciform plan. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with stone dressings and has a slate roof topped with an octagonal lead cupola and weathervane. The plan comprises a five-bay nave, a lower one-bay chancel, a west porch, transepts with further entrances, and a vestry to the north transept.

The west front features a large arched window flanked by octagonal brick and stone turrets, and a square porch with buttresses and an elliptical arch. The nave walls contain triple cinquefoil windows set under elliptical arches, divided by buttresses. The gabled transepts include the south transept with offset buttresses and a door flanked by sidelights on its west side. The north transept has two tall octagonal crenellated turrets with a vestry beneath; the vestry entrance faces east, and a further splayed entrance on the west side served the soldier staff of the Academy and their families. The chancel has an arched and traceried east window with offset buttresses.

The interior features a wooden hammerbeam roof supported on stone corbels. The west window contains stained glass of 1920 by Christopher Whall, depicting the front parade of the Royal Military Academy with the motto "QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT" and soldiers in various historical dress paying homage to the Virgin and Child. The lower walls are oak-panelled. Originally furnished with seats rather than pews, pews were fitted around 1934. A Perpendicular style screen with a marble base and an attached octagonal carved pulpit with marble base stands before the chancel steps. The chancel contains carved oak choir stalls, a gallery to the north, and an organ chamber to the south. A memorial oriel window to Herbert Jones Fleming (1911–1914 and 1918–22) stands to the south, while an attached oval marble of St Michael vanquishing the devil adorns the north chancel wall. The Sanctuary has a marble floor and railings with cast iron scrollwork balustrading and a wooden handrail. Elaborate panelling incorporates three sedilia with ornate canopies to the left and two to the right. The wooden reredos and east window form the Addiscombe Memorial of 1906–07, depicting Christ in Majesty flanked by St Thomas, Joshua, St Bartholomew and Longinus. The side windows of the Sanctuary contain figures of St Michael and St Raphael to the north, and St Uriel and St Gabriel to the south.

The church contains a considerable collection of memorials to alumni of the Royal Military Academy, principally tablets in oak panelling on the north and south walls of the nave. Near the pulpit is a bronze memorial statue with shield and octagonal canopy to Christopher Chevenix Trench, who died of a fever in South Africa. A brass plaque commemorates Richard Henry Jelf (died 1913), Governor of the Royal Military Academy and instrumental in commissioning the chapel. Memorial tablets honour Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, Colonel Commandant of the Royal Engineers, Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar, and General Sir Robert Mansergh, Adjutant at the Royal Military Academy. A Kohima memorial of 1944, brought from Africa in 1981, is also present, along with numerous other memorial tablets.

The chapel was built because the gentleman cadets of the Royal Military Academy previously had to use the Garrison Church of St George at the east end of the Front Parade, which lay a mile away and was inconvenient. The estimated cost was £5,000. The work was supervised by the Commander Royal Engineers at Woolwich. Until the Royal Military Academy's closure in 1939, the chapel served the spiritual needs of gentleman cadets destined for the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers and Royal Signals. When the Garrison Church of St George was destroyed by a German flying bomb in 1944, this chapel became the garrison church. Beyond its role as a place of worship, the chapel was conceived as a "campo Santo" for memorials to those trained at the Academy who died in service to their country, a function evidenced by the extensive rolls of honour and inscribed brass and copper plates throughout the building.