Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Michael, including attached Presbytery

Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Michael, including attached Presbytery

This Grade II* listed building comprises a church and adjoining presbytery, constructed of local coursed squared purple sandstone rubble with Bath stone quoins and dressings, beneath natural slate roofs with stone chimneys.

The church, positioned to the right, is designed in 14th-century Decorated Gothic style and contains a nave with north and south aisles and a chancel. The east gable, facing the road, features a plinth and stepped buttresses, with a very large east window in the Decorated manner containing six lights with an elaborately traceried head, beneath a steeply coped gable. The chancel's north and south elevations are arranged in two bays with further stepped buttresses and 2-light windows. The nave is substantially taller, divided into six bays separated by strip buttresses to the clerestorey and stepped buttresses to the aisles. The aisle windows are 2-light with cusped heads and reticulated tracery above in their east walls, while smaller 2-light windows appear in the north aisle and Decorated examples with cusped lights and quatrefoils feature in the clerestorey. The roof is very steeply pitched with coped gables. The west end contains a 5-light Decorated window above a shafted doorway.

The interior of the church is lofty and well proportioned. The six-bay nave has arcades with slim quatrefoil columns and sharply pointed arches, with uncarved blocks forming the capitals and at the foot of the trusses at clerestorey level. The roof structure consists of scissor trusses with closely set secondary rafters and two tiers of purlins, with lean-to aisle roofs. An inner west porch was added in the late 20th century. The church contains an elaborate wide and tall stone Decorated style reredos of 1883, designed by Edmund Kirby of Liverpool and carved by A B Wall of Cheltenham. The fine east window features glass by Hardman. A chantry chapel was added to the south aisle in 1894 in memory of local 17th-century martyrs, richly decorated with paintings, sculpture and glass, and includes panelling from the demolished Coldbrook House. The church's furniture is entirely Victorian. The building possesses an exceptionally fine collection of medieval and later vestments.

To the left stands the domestic range of the Presbytery, designed in 15th and 16th-century late Gothic style. It comprises one storey and attic with a projecting two-storey cross-wing to the left, totalling 1 + 3 bays. The principal elevation features Tudor style mullioned windows and a Tudor central door with a 4-light transom window above. A late Tudor style hall window on the right contains four lights with a king mullion. To the left is a three-light mullion-and-transom window with a small single light window above it. One central steeply gabled half dormer contains a 2-light window. The steeply pitched roof carries stacks behind the ridge. The gabled wing to the left displays a 2-light basement window with a 4-light mullion-and-transom window with king mullion above, and a 3-light window above that, with a trefoil in the gable above. Photographs document that the one major alteration to this elevation has been the removal of a large chimney stack from the right-hand return wall of the projecting wing.

The interior and planning of the Presbytery remain little altered, with joinery, staircase, fireplaces and plasterwork typical of the period and building type.