Building record 1083/1 - Church of St Michael & All Angels

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 56361 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Church, largely circa 1500 with a little twelfth century work inside and heavily restored by Joseph Clarke 1857-60. Red sandstone with low-pitched roofs. North-west tower, aisled nave with south porch, chancel with chapels continuing from nave aisles. Crenellated three-stage tower has diagonal buttresses, west window to vestry with intersecting tracery and panel-work, clock faces to west and east and two-light bell-ringer's chamber window to north and south, paired two-light bell-openings under single ogee hood-moulds, quatrefoil band below parapet. Four-light panel-traceried aisle and chapel windows, north door with square-topped four-light window above, two-storey south porch with three-light window over doorway, three-light clerestory windows. Canted west end to south aisle and east end to south chapel. Two panel-traceried four-light windows to east end of south chapel, reticulated east window to chancel flanked by one-light window to each side, five-light panel-traceried window and basket-arched doorway in east end of north chapel. Crenellation with crocketed pinnacles above buttresses. Interior: Nave of four full and 1 narrow bays; the narrow bay is at east end with late Norman pier and chancel respond in each arcade, the other bays are Perpendicular with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. Camber-beamed, panelled oak roof with carved bosses. Oak trusses to south chapel roof. Chancel arch has continuous moulding and no capitals. Chancel arcades have two four-centred arches south and two probably earlier arches north. North chapel has one basket-arched truss on carved-head corbels. Sixteenth/seventeenth century screen to chapels, restored, with small carvings; screen overthrows now in tower vestry, one inscribed ANNO DNI 1632: Peter Venables, the other, from Kinderton (north) Chapel has many painted heraldic panels. Continental east window glass, 1860; late nineteenth/early twentieth century memorial glass, stalls and one carved misericord in chancel (north side).

<2> Richards R, 1947, Old Cheshire Churches, p.234-37 (Book). SCH2309.

Modern restoration followed up the destruction during the Civil War, when the building was used as a place of sanctuary by the Royalists.

<3> Ordnance Survey, 1870-1982, Ordnance Survey Archaeological Record Card, SJ76 NW 12 (Index). SCH2487.