Church of St Michael and All Angels

Church of St Michael and All Angels

This small late 15th-century church is built of rubble stone with some ashlar dressings and has a battered stone plinth. It is roofed with plain tiles and stone ridge with stone gable copings. The building comprises a nave, chancel, south porch, and a timber bell-turret mounted over the west ridge of the nave.

The bell-turret is square with a steep pyramidal roof and wooden bell-chamber. Each face of the bell chamber has three louvred two-light trefoils, and the lower chamber wall is tile-hung.

The south wall of the nave features an off-centre gabled wooden porch with an arch-braced collar truss roof. The porch entrance has a Tudor arched head and double ogee moulded wooden doorframe. The lower side walls of the porch are stone, while the upper walls have unglazed seven-light wooden diamond mullions. To the right of the porch, the south wall of the nave has a late 15th-century Perpendicular three-light cinquefoil-headed window with a flat head and ribbed panels to the tracery.

The base of the chancel walls to a height of approximately two metres is medieval, but the upper walls date from 19th-century reconstruction. The chancel south wall displays, from left to right, a trefoil-headed lancet, a pointed arched chamfered stone doorway with a 19th-century boarded door, and a two-light window with a flat head. The east gable has a large stone cross at the apex and a pointed arched window with two trefoil-headed lights. Attached to the chancel north wall is a small 19th-century gabled vestry with a quatrefoil in the gable head and two trefoil-headed lancets below. The side wall of the vestry has a shouldered arched entrance doorway and a 19th-century door with ornamental strap hinges.

The nave north wall has two pointed arched windows, each with two lights and Y-tracery (the right window is a 19th-century restoration), and a single buttress with offsets. The west gable has a quatrefoil in the gable-head and below a three-light lancet window with trefoils.

The interior is largely 19th-century in character. The most remarkable feature is a great 19th-century timber bell frame which rests on four moulded stone corbels at the west end of the nave. Wall posts and arch braces rise from the corbels to support battlemented tie beams. Above the tie beam, the massive principals are curved and form a pointed arch supported by queen posts. Between the queen posts, tall arch braces rise to the apex with smaller cross braces in the bays on each side.

The nave has a late 15th-century wagon roof with moulded ribs and wall plate. The pointed chancel arch is double chamfered, with the inner arch supported on fluted corbels. To the left of the arch is a Tudor arched doorway to the gallery stair of the former rood screen. The chancel wagon roof is 19th-century with moulded ribs, floral bosses, and an embattled wall plate.

The chancel has an encaustic tile floor and a 19th-century communion rail supported on wrought iron supports with scrolled brackets. The chancel south wall contains a piscina with a chamfered pointed arch. A 12th-century pedestal font has a hemispherical bowl, octagonal shaft, and plinth, with a 19th-century cover. The 19th-century polygonal wooden pulpit has colonettes with shaft rings at the angles forming an open arcade, and lower sunk panels with blind pointed arches. The 19th-century pews have close-boarded backs and shaped ends. A 20th-century Eagle lectern is present. A wrought iron corona lucis hangs by chains from a circlet with eight candle sockets, the coronet decorated with fleurs-de-lys.

The stained glass includes a 19th-century east window and a window depicting St George and the Dragon from 1906–7 by C. E. Kempe.

Wall monuments include a monument to John Hopkins (died 1749) on the nave south wall. On the nave north wall is a fine Baroque-style monument of 1698 with a Hopkins shield surmounted by a skull and cross bones. Also present is a monument to John Hughes of the Mardee (died 1792), and a bronze memorial plaque to the celebrated local antiquarian Sir Joseph Bradney (died 1933).