Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

This is a church of exceptional architectural interest, with origins in the Late Saxon period but substantially rebuilt and extended from the late 12th century onwards.

The building consists of a chancel, nave with north aisle, south transept, and west tower. It is constructed of uncoursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, with squared masonry blocks used in the 12th-century tower and 15th-century clerestory. The roofs are of gabled stone slate.

The Late Saxon period is represented by a doorway in the south wall of the nave, marked by a stone lintel and flanked by a late 12th-century corbel table with anthropomorphic heads. The late 12th-century work is extensive: the tower is of this date, comprising three stages marked by string courses, with a pointed lancet and Transitional doorway with roll-moulded arch set on one order of shafts with plain abaci; Transitional belfry windows with stone-slate louvres and continuous linking hood moulds; and a late 12th-century corbel table with gargoyles and parapet. The nave also retains a corbel table of this period.

The Transitional and early 13th-century period is represented by a pointed moulded arch to the south transept and a Transitional arch to the west tower, the latter a triple roll-moulded pointed arch set on shafts of three orders with scalloped capitals. A Transitional chancel arch with ballflower-carved and scalloped corbels also survives, probably of early 13th-century date. The four-bay north arcade is of late 13th-century date, with hood moulds with face-mask and leaf-paterae stops over chamfered pointed arches set on circular and octagonal piers with octagonal abaci.

The south transept and chancel belong to around 1300. The south transept has a reticulated 3-light south window, a 2-light curvilinear east window, and an unusual west window with triangular head and lozenge tracery. The 2-bay chancel has 2-light windows of around 1300 to the south, and a pointed chamfered priest's door with an adjoining Transitional lancet to the north. A three-light reticulated east window lights the chancel. The south transept was originally the chantry chapel of Abingdon Abbey and contains two Decorated tomb recesses with cinquefoiled arches with ballflower carving, and two coffin lids carved with floreated crosses.

The early 14th century is represented by the north aisle, which has two 2-light reticulated windows flanking a late 19th-century stone porch. The doorway is pointed and hollow-chamfered, and frames a 14th-century door made of lapped planks to the front and crossed battens dovetailed into the outer edge to the rear, fitted with scrolled hinges and an iron-twist knocker. A piscina of 14th-century date survives in the north aisle.

The clerestory belongs to the 14th and 15th centuries. The south wall has a late 14th-century 2-light trefoil-headed window and a 15th-century 2-light cinquefoil-headed window. The parapet has a corbel table with fleuron frieze. The north clerestory has three 15th-century 2-light ogee-headed windows and one early 16th-century 2-light round-headed window.

The 15th-century work includes the bench ends in the nave, which have poppyheads carved with monsters, chameleons, and the Emblems of Christ's Passion. A 15th-century 2-bay waggon roof with moulded cornice and tie beams with angel corbels lights the chancel. A fine 15th-century five-bay cambered tie-beam roof with arch braces with quatrefoil spandrels supports the nave. The north aisle has a 15th-century lean-to roof with moulded and quartered beams supported by thin arch braces. A late 15th-century statue of Queen Elizabeth stands at the west end of the north aisle, removed from Dean Court; it has a 19th-century head, dexter hand, and sceptre. Part of a 15th-century Flemish glass panel is reset at the head of a north aisle window.

The interior retains a wealth of later furnishings and fixtures. An early 18th-century communion rail with barley-sugar and fluted balusters survives, as does an early 17th-century chancel rail with turned balusters. A late 17th-century communion table stands in the north aisle. The nave contains a fine Jacobean 2-decker pulpit and Clerk's Stall-cum-Lectern with relief carving. A flamboyant style late 19th-century font stands at the west end. The south transept has a blocked door to a former rood loft, two face corbels for statues, and an ogee-headed piscina, along with a 17th-century parish chest and 2-bay queen-post roof. Some 18th-century panelling survives in the north aisle.

The west tower contains a very fine spiral staircase, inscribed TB/GN/1685, which rises to the belfry. The winders are tenoned into an octagonal newel post and into a closed string with turned balusters, representing an excellent example of traditional joinery.

The church contains monuments of considerable historical interest. Anthony Forster, who died in 1572, and his wife Anne, who died in 1599, are commemorated by a Purbeck marble monument with a Gothic-style tomb chest and Gothic carved canopy with Tudor-flower cresting supported by unfluted Ionic columns. The carved back-plate has brasses of Forster and his wife set out over a long Latin elegy. Forster was involved with the death of Amy Robsart at nearby Cumnor Place. A wall brass in the nave to James Welsh, who died in 1612, and his wife Margery, who died in 1615, has a long epitaph. A wall monument to Norris Hodson, who died in 1740, records his involvement with Commodore Anson's circumnavigation of the globe and his burial in the great South Sea; it has a coloured heraldic achievement with angels' heads and doggerel verse. A wall tablet commemorates the antiquary Dr Benjamin Buckler, who died in 1780. A coloured marble tomb chest marks the burial of Sir William Hunter, a historian and surveyor of British India, who died in 1900. The north aisle contains a memorial in the floor to the infant Frances Peacock, who died in 1685, two 18th-century wall monuments to the Peacock family, and a wall monument in an architectural frame with palm sprays to Dudson Baker, who died in 1715, and his wife. Seventeenth-century ledger stones are set in the nave floor.

The stained glass includes an east window by Kempe of 1901 in memory of Sir William Hunter, a west window of St George also by Kempe of 1889, a south transept window of 1858, and a west window of the south transept with three roundels of armorial glass.

The church occupies an ancient hill-top site formerly shared with Cumnor Place, which was built for the abbots of Abingdon Abbey and achieved notoriety for the supposed murder of Amy Robsart by the Earl of Leicester and Anthony Forster. Cumnor Place was demolished in 1811, and features from it were reused at and around the Church of All Saints, Wytham.