Parish Church Of St Michael

The Parish Church of St Michael is a Grade II* listed building located in Askerwell. The church features a west tower dating from the 15th century, while the nave, north aisle, chancel, and south porch were rebuilt in 1858 in the Perpendicular style. Its construction includes random rubble walls with dressed stone bands and a slate roof with stone gable copings.

The west tower, also from the 15th century, consists of three stages with set-back buttresses and set-offs. It has a moulded plinth and a west doorway with moulded jambs, a four-centred head, and a shield in each spandrel. Above the doorway, the plinth moulding continues over the doorhead, which is fitted with a two-leaf 20th-century plank door. A half-octagonal south stair turret is also present.

The nave has three bays without a clear storey, featuring three-light trefoil-cusped windows with panel tracery and returned labels. The chancel, which is one bay, has a two-light window in the same style, while the east window consists of three lights with a quatrefoil at the top. The south porch has a pointed-arch entrance with moulded jambs, leading to an inner doorway with a pointed arch, straight chamfer, and pyramid stops, along with a two-leaf plank door with ornamental strap hinges from the 19th century. The north aisle, also from the 19th century, has a pentice slate roof and simple two-light windows with quatrefoil heads.

Inside, the church features three bays with a north arcade supported by octagonal piers with moulded capitals and chamfered and quirked arches. The tower arch has panelled jambs and soffit, dating from the 15th century. The roofs are of the arch-braced collar-beam type, carried on stone corbels, and are from the 19th century.

Notable fittings include a late 12th-century font with a circular stone bowl decorated with continuous intersecting arches on colonettes, a stone cylindrical stem with interlace cable, and spur feet. In the tower, there is a stone slab with an indent of a foliated cross and a marginal inscription, which is part of a tombstone for Thomas de Luda and his wife Eleanor, dating around 1320, originally from Abbotsbury Abbey. The inscription records a gift of Holywell to the abbey, with the other half of the slab located in the church at Whitechurch Canonicorum. Additionally, there is a carved stone panel of the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John on the west wall of the tower, dating from the 15th century.