Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael, Marwood

This is a parish church of considerable antiquity, with 13th-century fabric surviving in the chancel, which features two lancet windows on the north side (recently inserted) and a pointed south doorway. A south transept contains a single lancet in its east wall and an unmoulded pointed arch opening into the nave. The battered plinth on the north aisle indicates a former north transept, showing the church originally had a cruciform plan. The nave, remainder of the north aisle, and the upper stages of the tower date principally to the 15th century. The building underwent significant refenestration and reroofing in the late 19th century.

The roof is of late 19th-century slate, with the ridge resting on the junction of nave and chancel. The west tower comprises three stages and features a pentagonal stairturret on its north side with six small square openings. The tower has an embattled parapet with set-back buttresses applied only to the first stage. An elongated gravestone is apparently designed to be fixed onto the eastern buttress of the south wall. Small square-headed openings appear on the south and east faces of the second stage. Four two-light cusped bell-openings with quatrefoil tracery pierce the east and south walls but are blocked to the north and west, all with pointed labels with returned ends. Slate louvres sit below the tracery. The west end contains a mostly recut Perpendicular window, and the west door is of 15th-century date with Pevsner B-type moulding and a flat-pointed arch.

The embattled south porch features a flat-pointed arch supported on Pevsner A-type moulded piers. It has a small unceiled waggon roof of which some timber appears reused. A 14th-century south doorway has small foliated corbels. An international timed sundial dated 1762 by John Berry is mounted here. Two square-headed Perpendicular-style windows of three lights flank the porch, each with carved leaves in the spandrels.

The north arcade comprises five bays with B-type piers. The capitals of the western respond display Green Man foliage and berries, followed by three fleurons between plain shields, then two piers with interlaced fern and leaf decoration, then one with continuous fern pattern and interlaced leaves in the eastern respond. The chancel, nave, north aisle, and south transept retain unceiled waggon roofs. Some timber has been inserted into the nave and chancel roofs, but they are substantially intact. The north aisle roof is more complete, with carved bosses at the intersections of the ribs.

The north aisle has six bays of straight-headed Perpendicular windows of three lights each with slightly curved arches. A north door between the second and third windows from the west end has a hollow chamfered flat-pointed arch with a small round-headed niche above. A 14th-century three-light window, probably reset in the 17th century, stands at the east end of the north aisle with pointed-arch heads beneath gentle ogee arches. The south transept contains a raised plain wooden pointed-arch door opening to a blocked rood loft.

A section of early 16th-century rood screen of considerable quality spans the north aisle only. It displays Pevsner A-type tracery and complete ribbed coving of three bays, now lacking its gallery front though the gallery back survives. Richly carved panels record the name "Sir John Beaupul", Parson of Marwood holding office in 1520, showing Renaissance influence in the carving. The work is similar to that of the carver of the Atherington screen. A large plasterwork Royal Arms stands at the west end of the north aisle; a datestone of 1763 on its exterior wall may indicate the date of its erection.

An early rectangular font bowl sits at the west end beside a replacement front with a cover carved by John Robinson. Medieval floor tiles remain, principally at the rear of a new 17th-century pulpit. The nave contains 13 16th-century pews, each 2.5 metres wide, with ornamental carved bench ends and moulded backs. Three choir stalls on the north side have misericords.

Several monuments of note survive. On the east wall of the north aisle is a marble wall tablet with Ionic colonnettes flanking an inscription to Anne Chichester of Westcote (died 1664). On the north wall of the north aisle, a monument by J Berry features an urn and pedestal over Doric columns with a frieze inscription to an owner of Ley (died 1765); a medallion below has palmettes with an hour-glass above. Also on the north aisle north wall is a marble wall monument to William Parminter (died in Panama in 1737), Inquisitor General for the South Sea Company, and other family members. Its inscription records: "This monument having lost its hold on the wall where it had been fixed fell on the floor and was much mutilated. A grateful recollection of a respectable Ancestry imposed the necessity of its re-erection on a Surviving Descendant C1821". It features Corinthian pillars surmounted by seated figures to each side of an armorial shield and urn. A marble wall tablet on the south wall of the nave, dated 1633, has Ionic colonnettes to each side and an hour-glass in pendant. At the west end of the south nave wall is a wall monument to William and Anthony Beard (died 1652, aged 16 and 19), with two busts in high relief leaning on a table bearing a skull and hour-glass, shields above, a plaque below, and painted medallions with biblical inscriptions in the surround to each side.

The bell frame was not inspected during the listing survey but is reportedly said to contain six bells cast in 1771.