Church of St Michael

Church of St Michael

This is a 19th-century parish church built of local stone rubble with red Grinshill and cream Minera dressings. It comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a chancel with a lean-to vestry on the north side, and a southwest tower. The architecture is in the Early Decorated style, characterised by geometric tracery including bold double lancets with an oculus in the head, set under heavy hood moulding. The east and west windows have three lights with foiled roundels. The gables are coped and topped with stone terminal crosses. The tower is attached to the south aisle at the west end and is of three stages defined by string courses. It has a small pyramidal slate roof with a wind vane and gilded weathercock; a planned spire was never built. The main door beneath the tower features a moulded two-centred arch on boldly carved stiff-leaf capitals to igneous rock shafts, all enclosed within a triangular gabled string with joggled stones. At the east end of both aisles, a three-light window rises to a coped gable flush with the aisle face. All windows have plain leaded plate glass, now with external polycarbonate sheeting.

The entrance porch beneath the tower is seated on both sides and narrows to a ribbed vaulted passage leading to the main door, with a shouldered door on the left. The interior reflects ecclesiological principles, finished in snecked ashlar. The nave and aisles are separated by a four-bay arcade on stiff-leaf decorated columns of banded red and cream stone, with pointed arches similarly coloured and edged with a red outer band. The roof has steep scissor bracing with uniform scantling, inward-leaning ashlars, and a brattished cornice. The chancel arch is steeply pointed and carried on corbels with short polished marble shafts set on bishop and prince head corbels. The chancel is raised two steps, with a further three steps to the high altar. The open roof of four bays has trusses carried down to wall corbels. There is a trefoil-headed door to the north vestry and a narrow arch to the organ chamber.

The stone reredos dates from 1879 and comprises a central gabled aedicule flanked by sculpted heads in sunk quatrefoils, with a corbelled shelf below. The stained glass is particularly notable: the east window and two south windows contain work by Morris & Company to designs by Burne-Jones and Morris.

Fittings include a sanctuary rail of square section on brass-plated foliated stanchions, and a pulpit formed as a drum articulated with trefoil arches on red marble columns. A free-standing brass eagle lectern dates from 1858. The font near the west end is a circular bowl supported by four sturdy columns with lead capitals. On the north side at the west end of the aisle is a fine oval streaked marble font basin of 1791, a gift of Richard Edmunds from the old church, mounted on a splayed octagonal shaft. The reading desk of the choir stalls is carved with a running ivy-leaf scroll. The tower contains three bells, one from the old church and two added around 1890.

Monuments are distributed throughout the church. In the south aisle: a white tablet shield to Colonel Robert Harun (died 1896) by E M Lander of Kensal Green, and a white tablet to Ann Morris and others of the Gaer (died 1894-1909). In the north aisle is a small brass to Margaret Jacks of Stubb (died 1784) by W Rider, the sundial maker. In the nave is a brass commemorating the new heating apparatus donated by Edmunds of Edderton Hall in 1917. In the porch are a marble scroll on black to Captain Richard Campbell (died 1869) and Colonel Hugh Morrieson (died 1832), and two unfixed round-headed oak head boards, one of 1821. A late 18th-century Royal Arms has been placed in the Powysland Museum.