Saint Michael's Church

Detached Church of Ireland church, designed in c. 1836 and completed in 1844, in a late Georgian Gothic Revival design, comprising a single-cell church standing on a crypt. Distinguished by a north-facing limestone ashlar façade comprising a three-stage tower with crenellated parapet with corner and intermediate pinnacles. The tower is structurally and visually strengthened by angle corner buttresses. Raised, and pinnacles added in 1877. It breaks forward from the façade which has a crenellated parapet and angled corner buttresses which terminate with pinnacles. Lancet windows flank the tower which accommodates the principal entrance at its ground floor stage. Smooth limestone ashlar faced side six-bay single-storey side elevations over coursed and squared limestone crypt elevations. Each bay is articulated by engaged buttressing and terminated with a crenellated parapet which returns from the façade. Each bay has a pointed-arched window opening with carved drip stone and elaborate tracery in the Perpendicular Gothic style to the northern three bays and forming cusped arched tracery to the southernmost bays. Chancel to south elevation. Pointed-arched window opening to second stage of tower with perpendicular tracery to upper sections of multiple-paned timber sash windows. Pointed-arched door opening with carved drip stone with label stops; canted, stepped and profiled reveals join at apex; flight of limestone steps gives access to tongued and grooved timber double doors with panelled tympanum above. Tudor-arched opening to side elevation distinguished by a squared label moulding with recessed panelled spandrels, smooth ashlar chamfered reveals, and double-leaf tongued and grooved timber doors; arrived at by limestone flag bridging basement area. Intact church interior with altar and arched chancel to south end and enclosed narthex to north end with gallery above. Interior remodelled, in 1877, with the addition of the chancel. Plain plastered walls with all emphasis apparently given to unusual hammerbeam roof structure with arch braces encased by tongued and grooved panelling. Highly decorative lateral timber tie-beams. Polished marble columns with foliate capitals support limestone arch which defines the chancel which is illuminated by a perpendicular Gothic tracery window with stained glass panes. Encaustic tile floor covering to nave aisle flanked by early box pews. Richly carved mahogany pulpit with Gothicised panelling. Figurative stained glass window glazing replaces original Georgian panes, which survive to the three northern bays to east and west. Multiple commemorative and memorial plaques to the interior. Front site enclosed from Pery Square by fine boundary treatment comprising limestone plinth wall supporting wrought- and cast-iron railings, terminating with emphatic limestone piers with stop-chamfered corners o a battered base and having a pyramidal capping stones surmounted by the cast-iron bases of gas lamp standards. Vehicular access to west with sloping lane to rear site.