Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels

Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels

This is a parish church constructed in 1844-45 by architect John Hayward, with the notable exception of its early 16th-century arcade. The church is built of coursed red sandstone with Beer stone dressing and a fishscale slate roof with heavy coping to gable walls and crosses at the apexes. It is designed in the Early Perpendicular style.

The building comprises a west tower, nave, south porch, north aisle, chancel, and north-east vestry. The three-stage west tower, set on a plinth, is battlemented with corner pinnacles (now partially dismantled) and a stringcourse with gargoyles below the parapet. Angle buttresses with set-offs support the tower, which includes a south-west angle staircase with half-pyramidal roof, buttressed and lit by small quatrefoil panels. The bellringing chamber is lit by trefoil-headed lancets on all sides and 2-light pointed belfry openings. A canopied statue occupies a niche on the south face, with a 3-light west window above the west door, whose plinth is raised to act as a hood mould.

The south side features five bays including the porch, with 2-light windows divided by buttresses with set-offs. The chancel has two lancets divided by a similar buttress, a priest's door, and diagonal buttresses at the east angles, with a 3-light east window. The north-east vestry, separately roofed with a prominent stack, has five bays on the north aisle side, matching the south arrangement but without a porch.

The interior preserves a five-bay arcade from the early 16th century, with the westernmost bay notably narrower than the others. The piers have deep moulding and capitals carved with roses and shield-bearing angels, some executed with primitive handling. The arcades, nave, and aisle all feature open wagon roofs, which may retain some medieval bosses and part of a wall plate. A complete set of 1840s bench ends, traceried with cusped roundels containing a variety of motifs, furnishes the nave.

A stone polygonal font with quatrefoil panels is topped by a pinnacled cover. The stone polygonal pulpit, with finialed pinnacles to its stiles and panels containing carved saints under finialed canopies, was executed by sculptor John Thomas, who also carved the figure of St Michael in the tower niche.

The chancel is exceptionally well preserved. Stencilled wall decorations and painted roof members cover the interior, complemented by over floor tiles and decorative tiles on the risers of the sanctuary steps and east wall up to altar level. The contemporary altar table is flanked by porcelain commandment panels within stone surrounds, pinnacled, finialed and crocketed. Sanctuary rails complete the liturgical arrangements. Deeply recessed window arches enliven the wall spaces, along with the sequence of south windows, a priest's door, and double sedilia, all heavily cusped with foliated decoration to the spandrels.

Hayward's church at Sowton was financed by the High Church Garrett family of Bishop's Court and represents an early work in the ecclesiologically correct Gothic movement. The rebuilding garnered praise in the Ecclesiologist journal, establishing Hayward temporarily as a leading exponent before his displacement by Butterfield. Sowton is an early Ecclesiological church comparable to Scott's St Giles, Camberwell (1842), also praised by the Ecclesiologist for adhering to true principles of ecclesiology. The church remains remarkably intact with its full complement of fine fittings and well-preserved decorative scheme.

The stone sculptor John Thomas (1813-62), whose work impressed architect Sir Charles Barry, was subsequently engaged to superintend the stone carving of the Houses of Parliament.