Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

An Anglican parish church at Wilsford cum Lake, dating to the 12th century but largely rebuilt in 1852 by T. H. Wyatt for Giles Loder.

The church is constructed of strap-pointed flint with limestone dressings, and greensand quoins to the 12th-century work in the tower. The roof is tiled throughout. The plan consists of a nave and chancel in one, with an organ chamber on the north side, a timber-framed south porch added by Weaver in 1869, and a 12th-century west tower. The walls are lit by widely spaced lancets with a sill string course, and the east end has triple lancets. An ashlar eaves course runs along the walls. Some chevron and other 12th-century carved stones are built into the walls.

The tower has 12th-century lower two stages without buttresses. The west door features nook shafts and cushioned capitals, and there are two round-headed windows in the lower stages. The upper stage was rebuilt with a corbelled parapet and two-light openings, and has a pyramidal tiled roof.

The interior is spacious, with plastered walls and a flagged floor. The chancel is differentiated from the nave only by a heavier truss. The nave roof comprises three and a half bays with open timber trusses featuring principal rafters braced from hammer beams and vertical studs above collars. The chancel truss is of pierced oak, carried on timber wall shafts on stone corbels, with a panelled angled ceiling over the chancel end. The 12th-century tower arch has chamfered impost capitals with applied balls on the north side. A round-headed opening connects the bell chamber to the nave.

The font is an octagonal limestone bowl on a short column, possibly 17th-century, and was reset in the 19th century. The pulpit is panelled. The communion rail, choir stalls, and pews are all 19th-century, except for two plain pews near the rear of the church, which are probably 17th-century. An organ by J. W. Walker, dating to 1858, is housed in a Gothic case.

The south chancel window contains a small 15th-century crucified Christ set in 14th-century pieces.

The church contains an extensive and interesting range of wall monuments. On the north side, from the east end, there is: a Gothic limestone niche with angled buttresses and an ogee cusped canopy to Edward Duke of Lake House (died 1852); a small neat Carrara marble tablet with a pyramid over the panel to Samuel Andrews (died 1801); a Gothic niche by Osmund with a nodding crocketed ogee canopy between panelled buttresses carrying square pinnacles and a crocketed gable behind, with an inscribed and imprinted marble panel to Elizabeth Loder of Wilsford House; a large Carrara marble panel with a fluted frame to Augustine Hayter (died 1779) and later family; an engraved slate tablet by Eric Gill, portraying mother and child, to Wynlayne Foster Lodge of Painswick (died 1922); and a wall tablet by Earlsman of Sarum with a shaped top, white marble oval panel on a grey field with an urn over and husks below, to Richard Chandler (died 1784).

On the south side, from the east end, there is: a corniced wall tablet by Earlsman in white and grey marbles with an urn on steps above an erased wyvern crest, to Robert Duke (died 1793) and his wife (died 1805); a white marble tablet with a yellow marble panel and scroll and foliage supporters, a cornice over carrying coloured mantled arms, and two putti in three-quarter relief below, to Edward Wyndham Tennant (died 1916 on the Somme); in a window embrasure, a polished slate tablet with a shaped top and a crown of ships in a roundel, to Lieutenant John Chetwode, RN (died 1941); in the next embrasure, a terrazzo tablet with a shaped top and relief of Monte Cassino within a wreath, to Major Douglas Bailey (died 1944); a white marble sarcophagus on grey by Osmund with a corniced lid carrying coloured arms, to Philip Pinckney (died 1843); a polished limestone panel to Richard Sykes, ambassador to the Netherlands (assassinated 1979); and a white marble corniced panel on grey with a draped urn over, to John Pinckney (died 1792).

On the west wall are carved arms of George III and two hatchments to Robert Duke (died 1749) and Robert Duke, his son (died 1793).

In the chancel is a series of six cast and painted plaster panels of angels playing musical instruments, with separate garlands over and roundels above, and half-round panels below with quotations from Keats' Ode.

Eight 18th-century metal sconces are mounted in the nave.

The churchyard contains four significant post-Great War memorials: a limestone memorial against the south chancel wall, dated 1940, to Sir Oliver Lodge, with an adjacent slab to his wife; in the churchyard extension, a striking limestone headstone with a very broad cornice and swept base by Roderick Gradidge, with figures and inscriptions on both sides, to Diana Blow (died 1967); a tablet to Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templar (died 1979); and a headstone to David Tennant (died 1968), to which his wife Hermione Baddeley was added in 1986.