Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael, Winchester

A former parish church, now serving as a chapel to Winchester College. The building retains substantial medieval fabric, particularly in the tower and nave walls, with major alterations and extensions undertaken in the 19th century.

The Church of St Michael-without-Kingsgate is recorded in the register of John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, between 1282 and 1304. It was also known as St Michael-in-the-Soke, serving the eastern suburb of the medieval city. Before 1300, some fifty churches and chapels existed in Winchester; by the 18th century only eight medieval parish churches remained, of which six still survive. The church became redundant in the 1970s and was subsequently acquired by Winchester College.

The existing 15th-century tower and nave walls are constructed in flint and rubble with stone dressings, with a course of red bricks below the eaves of the nave. The roof is clay tile with ridge cresting. Later 19th-century additions are faced in flint with stone dressings and chequerwork to the gables.

The plan comprises a nave, south-east chancel, and west tower, with a north-east organ chamber and vestry, a north-west organ chamber and vestry, and a south-west porch. The odd alignment of the tower and chancel at the south side, and the broad proportions of the nave, reflect the building's complex history of alteration.

The Perpendicular tower features heavy offset diagonal buttresses and a low pyramidal roof. The ground stage has a west window with paired uncusped lights set within a broad two-centred arched head. The ringing stage is lit by narrow windows on the west and south sides, while the bell chamber has plain square-headed two-light windows on each side. A small doorway with a two-centred head opens from the south wall. The nave windows date to around 1500 but were much restored in the 19th century, featuring paired cinquefoiled lights within square heads. The east window on the north wall has reset head-stops, while the west window is a 19th-century insertion. A broad offset buttress stands between windows on the north wall. The centre of the south wall displays a medieval scratch dial or mass clock, and a stone tablet records the repair and enlargement of the church in 1822. Numerous 18th and 19th-century memorials are set into the nave walls.

The shallow south-west porch has lateral buttresses, a gable with an open sexfoil roundel, a three-centred arch, and a door with decorative hingework.

The chancel has an east window with geometrical tracery, flanked by offset buttresses. The south wall contains three two-light windows in Decorated-style tracery.

In the interior, a medieval double-chamfered tower arch marks the entrance to the nave. A holy water stoup stands adjacent to the door. The nave has a broad, elliptical-profile plaster ceiling with a central cast-iron ventilation grille. The north side of the chancel contains an arch to the organ chamber; adjacent to this, at a lower level, are the eastern respond and part of the arch-springer of the east bay of a nave arcade. This arcade was envisaged in Butterfield's 1882 works but was never completed.

The chancel has a ceiled wagon roof with brattished wallplate; the main transverse ribs are cusped and doubled above the sanctuary rail. A coloured and patterned tile floor is laid in a complex design. The vestry also features an elaborate tile floor.

The 15th-century stone font has an octagonal bowl carved with quatrefoils, a cylindrical stem, and a moulded octagonal base. Nave bench ends display a complex shouldered profile. A polygonal timber pulpit with a memorial date of 1909 features traceried panels and a carved relief figure of St Michael. Choir stalls have shaped ends and open-traceried frontals. The altar rail has a traceried balustrade. The sanctuary contains a reredos with three cusped and traceried stone-framed panels inset with coloured tile patterns; the central panel has an integral white marble cross and inset marble roundels.

Numerous wall tablets date from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Of particular note is a marble memorial on the nave south wall, dated 1675, commemorating seven children of Henry and Anne Beeston, six of whom died at the age of seven; it is carved with seven skulls accordingly.

Historical alterations are well-documented. Plans from 1822 show that the existing church originally had a north aisle of equal width to the nave, with a five-bay arcade bisecting the church and the chancel located in the south-east bay. The sanctuary was interrupted by the eastern bay of the arcade, suggesting that an earlier chancel had been demolished and relocated into the nave. Martin Filer of Winchester oversaw alterations and extensions in 1822, during which the nave arcade was demolished and the entire space ceiled over to create a late-Georgian preaching box. A centrally placed rectangular chancel was added with a vestry on the south side. Although the south wall of the nave is marked on the 1822 plans as 'new', it evidently was not, but a central entrance was added while the existing south-west doorway was blocked.

William Butterfield undertook further remodelling around 1882, including reseating, rebuilding of the chancel, addition of the south-west porch, organ chamber, and vestry. Butterfield's plans show that a small section of the east end was demolished to accommodate a longer chancel; the 1822 doorway was blocked and the south-west entrance reinstated. A new north aisle, narrower than the original and aligned with the north wall of the chancel, was envisaged, but only the eastern pier was completed. The vestry was extended in 1898, as recorded by the date on the hopper-head.