Church Of St Michael

Church of St. Michael, North Cadbury

This is an Anglican parish church, mostly dating from 1417 with a tower constructed a few years earlier. It contains some older fragments and underwent restoration work by John Norton. The church is built from local lias stone, cut and squared, with Doulting stone dressings and lead roofs behind parapets.

The building follows a symmetrical 4-cell plan comprising a 3-bay chancel, 5-bay nave, north and south aisles, matching 2-storey north and south porches, a north-east vestry, and a west tower.

The chancel features a deep plinth, angled corner and bay buttresses, string courses, and plain parapets with a cross finial to the gable. The east window is a 5-light design with relatively plain cusped Perpendicular tracery under an arched label with square stops. Matching 3-light windows appear on the north and south sides, all with external ferramenta. A small pointed-arched doorway with matching label is set in the centre bay of the south side. The north-east vestry matches the chancel and dates from slightly later in the 15th century, containing 2 bays with 2-light cusped flat-arched windows in the east and north walls, and a heating chamber beneath. The north aisle matches the chancel in general detail but has internal ferramenta on its windows and no west window. The south aisle mirrors this design.

The nave is visible only as a clerestory with simple 3-light cusped windows under high cambered arches, with the general line of roof and parapet continuous with the chancel.

The north and south porches are almost identical and match the rest of the church, featuring a deep plinth, angled corner buttresses, string courses, and plain parapet. Octagonal stair turrets sit on the inner east corner with stepped conoid roofs and crocketted finials. Each porch has a simple 2-order pointed outer archway with a crocketted ogee label ending in a statue niche, flanked by two small 2-light traceried windows. Between the springing of the doorway arch and the cills is a band of traceried panels. The south porch sports a pointed sundial on the parapet. Both porches have stellar lierne vaults inside with hollow-mould inner door arches featuring only nominal capitals, bench seats, and original doors into the stair turrets.

The tower consists of three stages with deep plinths, angled corner buttresses to full height, string courses, corner gargoyles at the top, and a battlemented parapet. A square-plan south-east stair turret rises for two stages before becoming octagonal, topped with a small spirelet bearing a crocketted finial. The sides of the tower are plain at the base, but the west face has a cambered arched doorway under a square label with headstops and foliated spandrels. Above this is a 3-light window with cusped tracery featuring a transome at springing level, set in a deep chamfer without a label. The second stage has a small simple rectangular window on the south and west faces, and a 2-light traceried window in a deep chamfered reveal on the north side over a clock-face. All faces at the third stage have 2-light traceried windows with pierced stone baffles, and an additional rectangular window appears on the west side.

The interior character is almost entirely 15th century. The tall chancel contains a traceried kingpost trussed roof, which is panelled and may have some 19th-century restoration. The walls are plain except for a 19th-century reredos and tall canopied statue niches to each side, with traces of original colouring. A 3-seat ogee-canopied sedilia sits in the south wall, while the original altar top stone is mounted opposite. The chancel contains 19th-century choirstalls and fittings.

The vestry was once used as a school and retains alphabet letters painted in 18th-century script on the south wall. It has a chamfer-mould panelled roof with one carved centre boss.

The nave has early arcades and a full-width chancel arch but a narrow tower arch. The roof is a fine traceried kingpost design with end drops onto angel corbels and leaf bosses, more elaborate than the chancel roof. The aisles have simpler roofs with only the east bays panelled.

The font is probably 15th-century with an octagonal bowl featuring a variety of panels and a square pillar with corner shafts. The 18th-century pulpit is present. A fine collection of mostly 16th-century bench ends survives, including one dated 1538. The east wall of the south aisle retains three misericords dating from around 1400.

Memorials are mostly 19th and 20th-century, but in the tower space stand two large early 17th-century chest tombs. One is dated 1611 and probably belongs to Sir Francis Hastings (died 1610) and his wife (died 1596), who is commemorated by a 96-line poem engraved on a brass above. The other tomb is to Ewens Fuily, Katherine (died 1612) and Matthew (died 1629). Several 18th-century tablets also remain. An early 15th-century tomb to the Batreaux family, who built the church, was removed for restoration in January 1985.

Numerous fragments of medieval glass survive, particularly in the west window, where eight figures are preserved after being reset in 1891.