Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

Built between 1835 and 1837 to designs by G P Manners, with the interior remodelled in 1901 by Wallace Gill, this is a substantial Gothic Revival church constructed in limestone ashlar with slate roofs. It stands on the east side of Broad Street on a sloping peninsular site, representing the fourth church to occupy this location just outside the former city walls.

The building follows an Early English style and comprises a rectangular aisled plan with a projecting tower to the south. The main body has four bays to the east side including a shallow transept, and five bays to the west. The design was based on the retro-choir of Salisbury Cathedral.

The exterior displays considerable decorative elaboration. A moulded coped parapet features semicircular arches over trefoil-headed recesses. The cornice incorporates a leaf chevron frieze and trefoil-arched corbel table with turned pendants and moulded plinth. The east side is articulated by chamfered buttresses set back at quoins, with five deeply cut weathered marks at window impost level and gables below tall spirelet pinnacles. Pointed-arched triple windows with taller lights to the centres have rounded capitals to colonnettes and leaded lights with some stained glass. The north transept has two-light windows to each return.

The three-stage tower is particularly striking, featuring an octagonal spire with crocketed gables to the lower half of each facet, pierced trefoils to apexes, and two-light openings below pierced quatrefoils. A parapet of pierced trefoils in triangular panels tops the tower, set over a frieze of quatrefoils in diagonally set square panels. A pierced rose window occupies the second stage. The tall south window to the tower front matches the aisles' fenestration and has a moulded stringcourse at impost level. The sloping site necessitates a double plinth, with infill stair turrets featuring smaller buttresses to angles, two-light windows with impost and sill stringcourses, and pointed arches over planked doors with ornamental hinges. The west side follows the east without a transept but includes a single-storey entrance bay to the left.

Internally, the church comprises a west tower, polygonally set east and west porches, nave and aisles, sanctuary, and polygonal apse. The aisles reach the same height as the nave, creating a hall church arrangement designed to accommodate galleries, which were removed during later re-ordering. The arcades comprise tall slender circular piers, each with four attached shafts. The ceiling features quadripartite plaster rib vaulting, with blank arcading to the polygonal apse. Numerous wall monuments, including several to the Blair family with fine martial reliefs, are concentrated at the western liturgical end. The interior retains an organ of 1847 by Sweetland, fittings including canvases from a mid-18th century altar-piece depicting Moses (by Robinson of London) and Christ with the Cross (by William Hoare RA), an opulent High Victorian sanctuary, and bench pews with Free Gothic bench-ends.

The present church replaced a classical church of 1741 to 1743 by John Harvey, which seated 500 and had a distinctive dome-capped tower. Expansion of Walcot parish and liturgical considerations prompted the building of the present structure, which seated 780 and cost £6,000. The church was consecrated on 4 January 1837. Originally furnished with galleries, these were removed along with Manners's pulpit and pews during a major re-ordering in 1889.

St Michael's represents a notable pre-Pugin Gothic Revival church, erected before archaeological correctness came to dominate ecclesiastical architecture. It possesses significant townscape value through its scale, siting, lofty proportions, decorative consistency, and overall Romantic conception. The interior survives in fine condition.