Church Of St Michael And All Angels

ST31SE 2/2

CHAFFCOMBE CP, KNAPPS LANE (North side), Church of St Michael and All Angels

4.2.58

GV II*

Anglican parish church. Tower partly C15, remainder rebuilt under James Mountford Allen 1857-1860. Local lias and Ham stone ashlar and near-ashlar, but chancel and north aisle in rubblework with ashlar dressings; plain clay tiled roofs having stepped coped gables. Four-cell plan of 2-bay chancel, 3-bay nave and north aisle, with north-east organ chamber; south porch and west tower. Chancel has plinth, two-thirds height offset buttresses to south-east corner; east window 3-light of Geometric pattern having plain label; in south wall pair of cusped lancets without label, and to east a simply moulded pointed-arched doorway. Organ chamber has no plinth or buttresses; 2-light quasi-plate tracery window in recess in east wall, and plain cusped lancets on north side; C20 boilerhouse, part sunken, against north wall. North aisle has angled corner and central buttresses to two-thirds height, and in north wall two 3-light C13 style fiat-headed cinquefoil-cusped windows in moulded recess without labels; 2-light Geometric style window without label in west wall. Nave has single buttress to south-east corner, and three 2-light windows in C15 style, one to west and two to east of south porch. Porch has angled corner buttresses and an apparently reused C15 shafts-with-hollow moulded pointed-arched outer doorway, and C15 inner doorway having moulded pointed arch in rectangular recess with leaf- carved spandrels. Tower in 3 stages, with offset corner buttresses 2 stages high, terminating in diagonally-set pilasters with pinnacles; double plinth, string courses, the top having corner gargoyles, and crenellated parapet; on south-east corner an octagonal-plan stair turret slightly higher than main tower, with pinnacles to all angles: west door is a simple moulded pointed archway without label, with 3-light window above (undergoing restoration and releading September 1986), and high in stage 1 on south-east corner are two small fragments of C15 carved figures, one in a canopied recess: stage 2 has a simple rectangular leaded light in west face only; to all faces of stage 3 are 2-light C15 traceried windows in hollowed recesses. Inside work almost entirely of C19; timber rib and plaster panel barrel-vault ceilings; C15 tower arch: C18 communion rail with turned balusters. Copy of Raphael's Madonna and Child' in north aisle, acquired in 1901. Tub font with tulip bowl, possibly from the earliest church, of which the first recorded rector was of 1175. (Pevsner N, Buildings of England, South and West Somerset, 1958; VCH Somerset, Vol IV, 1978, pp127-8).

Listing NGR: ST3539410183