Catholic Church of St Michael

The Catholic Church of St Michael is a late 19th-century building designed in the Gothic Revival style. It features a nave, continuous north and south aisles, and a tower located at the southwest corner. The church is constructed from coursed Pennant sandstone with Bath stone dressings and has a slated roof topped with two copper ventilators that have conical roofs. The clerestory is illuminated by six lancet windows with cusped heads. The single-storey lean-to aisles are lit by six simple two-light traceried windows, while the west window is a large four-light design with simple 'Y' tracery. There is a small projecting west porch with a cusped outer door supported by engaged columns.

The tower is slender and square, consisting of three stages. The lower two stages are made of coursed Pennant stone, featuring a pointed doorway on the south side beneath a canopied niche that holds a statue of St Michael. The upper stage is made of Bath stone and has a base decorated with a blind arcaded frieze adorned with ballflowers. Engaged octagonal shafts rise from the corners of the tower to plain pinnacles topped with a short Bath stone spire. Each face of the tower has narrow, louvered, cusped-headed belfry lights. The east end of the church has a large traceried four-light window similar to the one on the west elevation.

Inside, the church has an open scissor-framed roof with arched principles. The aisles are arcaded in Early English style, featuring richly moulded arches and capitals supported by simple round columns. At the west end, beneath the organ loft, there is a timber screen in Jacobethan style from 1926. The church retains a complete set of high-quality stained glass, with east and west windows by Hardman, installed in 1894, and aisle windows by Mayer of Munich from around 1890. Other notable fittings include an ornate stone gothic reredos with a tall central tabernacle throne, a stone gothic forward altar (possibly a relocated and altered original high altar), stone and marble communion rails in the sanctuary, a stone gothic font, a polychrome oak statue of St Michael the Archangel at the sanctuary entrance, carved Stations of the Cross from the mid-20th century, a bronze statue of St Peter (a copy from St Peter’s Basilica in Rome) at the west end of the nave, a polychrome statue of St Anthony of Padua, a pieta in the war memorial chapel, and an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (a copy from Rome). The nave also contains modern pews.