Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

Parish church dedicated in 1261. Mostly rebuilt incorporating some of the earlier structure in 1862-4 by G E Street. Built of slatestone with freestone dressings and Delabole slate roofs, in the Decorated style. The church comprises a nave, chancel, west tower, north and south transepts, and south porch.

The north wall of the nave contains a 2-light cusped window with quatrefoil tracery and a blocked pointed arched door to its right, both with hoodmoulds featuring carved head label stops. The north transept has a 3-light north gable window with trefoil-bordered rose, diagonal corner buttresses, and a coped gable with cross finial. A small weathered projection projects from the left of a 3-light rose window in the east wall. The chancel's north wall includes an offset corner buttress to the left, a 2-light trefoil-headed window, and a weathered projection to the right. The chancel's east gable resembles the north transept, with a similar projection to the right. The south transept's gable features a 3-light traceried window with corner buttresses. The south porch has a 2-centred moulded door frame and corner buttresses rising to frame a 2-light window with rose in the gable. The south wall of the nave between the porch and south transept has a 2-light window with trefoil tracery.

The tower rises in two stages with offset corner buttresses featuring three offsets to the first stage and a steep pyramidal asbestos slate roof behind a simple parapet with gargoyles. An octagonal stair turret is surmounted by a spirelet. The pointed west doorway may contain early stonework from the 13th or 14th century surviving from the old church. The inner porch doorway to the south wall of the nave is probably also from the 13th or 14th century. Tower windows are in the Decorated style, with large 3-light belfry windows featuring intersecting tracery and stone louvres within ordered pointed arches linked to a minor string course.

The interior preserves surviving 13th or 14th-century stonework in the tower arch (with red ancient colouring), the north transept arch, and the rear arch in the south transept. Sedilia in the north and south transepts are probably 13th century, as are traceried reredos screens—curvilinear in the north transept and Decorated in the south transept. A pointed rood stair doorway (resited) and tower stair doorframe also survive. The chancel has an alabaster reredos with a frame in 14th-century style and adjacent niches. A niche in the north wall of the chancel contains an inscribed dedication stone with a cross. Sepulchral niches adjoining the sedilia in the north and south transepts contain coffin slabs with foliated crosses, probably 13th century, as is the altar slab in the north transept and the piscina in the porch. Wagon roofs to the nave, chancel, and transepts are 19th century.

Numerous monuments to the Boscawen family include a reclining painted effigy of Hugh Boscawen (died 1559) on a corbelled and scrolled base with triple Corinthian colonnade and cartouche between obelisks, the whole framing lozenge and rectangular plaques; Edward Boscawen (died 1761) by Rysbrack, 1763, of marble bust with drum and anchor against tapered background; Lieutenant William Boscawen (who died swimming); Edward Hugh Boscawen (died 1774) by Nollekens; Francis Boscawen (died 1774) by Nollekens; and Elizabeth Ann Viscountess Falmouth (died 1793), all with urns. Brasses include one to John Trenowith (died 1497) in the south transept floor showing a praying armoured figure standing on a dog, one in the north transept floor to Marie, widow of Peter Coffin, 1622, and Edward Boscawen of Nancarrow, and one in the wall to John Boscawen (died 1564) and Hugo Boscawen (died 1634). Fittings include oak pews and choir stalls, and a circular limestone and marble pulpit with turned balustrade and hexagonal, lead-lined, limestone front supported on eight engaged shafts.

From the surviving evidence it is possible that the 13th-century church was replaced by a later 13th-century one of some quality. Apart from the west doorway and south inner doorway, the building appears to have been entirely refaced externally in Street's remodelling.