Church Of St Mary And St Michael

The Church of St Mary and St Michael is a parish church built in 1881 by T. Lewis Banks, located in Egremont. It replaced a late 12th-century church, parts of which were incorporated into the new structure. A western baptistry was gifted by local Freemasons in 1883, and the tower was raised in 1901 by Oliver & Dodgshun. The church is constructed from hammer-dressed, snecked sandstone blocks with quoins, featuring a moulded plinth, strings, eaves cornice, and pilaster buttresses. It has graduated slate roofs with outshuts on either side of the chancel, along with stone copings, kneelers, and apex crosses. The building showcases an Early English style, with an embattled tower at the north-west corner, a nave with aisles, a short transept, and a chancel.

The four-stage tower includes a panelled door at the ground floor and a pointed arch-head with four orders and foliate capitals on the jamb-shafts. There is a similar two-order door in a gabled porch on the south side. The church features lancet windows, some of which are re-used from the late 12th century, and corbels of a similar date can be found in the north aisle.

Inside, pointed arches are present throughout, with a five-bay nave arcade supported by columns featuring foliate capitals. The nave roof is carried on corbels, and the transept arms are separated from the nave by a two-bay arcade on tall quatrefoil piers. The chancel contains a two-seater sedilia, a pillar piscina, and a shelf under a wall arcade. Late 19th-century fittings include a pulpit made of Caen stone with alabaster figures, supported on marble shafts, and a scalloped font bowl held up by kneeling angel supports. Drawings and a description of the earlier church by T. Lewis Banks can be found in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Old Series, Volume 6, pages 163-175.