Church Of St Michael

Description

This information is taken from the statutory List as it was in 2001 and may not be up to date.

BROOME RECTORY ROAD TM 39 SW 6/23 Church of St. Michael 5-9-60

- I

Parish church. Fabric mainly C15 with C14 chancel. Flint with limestone dressings. Nave and porch roofs plain tiled, chancel roof of black glazed pantiles. West tower, nave, south porch, chancel. Square C15 west tower with staged diagonal buttresses; base course of flushwork panels with shields in buttress bases. West doorway with square drip mould with tracery and shields in spandrels. Frieze above of shields and roses on quatrefoil fields forming cill of tall 3-light west window. Canopied niche above window head.

Square traceried sound holes above string course of first stage. Tracery removed from bell openings. Double stepped castellated parapet. South porch entirely rendered over, obscuring much detail; staged diagonal buttresses to gable, blocked east and west window openings. Rebuilt red brick arch to entrance. Nave and chancel each have two 3-light Perpendicular south windows with elliptical heads and stilted hood moulds on headstops. Staged buttresses divide bays. Small C14 priests doorway in chancel south wall, to east of centre buttress. East window of three lights, cusped Y-tracery; hood mould with ballflower decoration and headstops. North wall of chancel has one 2-light cusped Y tracery window; memorial tablet on corbel brackets set in eastern bay - no visible inscription. Earlier north doorway now masked and blocked by central buttress. Crudely-built stair turret in angle of nave and chancel. Two 3-light Perpendicular windows in north wall of nave. North doorway with plain chamfered reveal, opening blocked and rendered over. Stoup in northeast angle of porch. South door probably C15, retaining old ironwork.

Nave and chancel roofs plastered over: chancel ceiling has panels divided by rollmoulded ribs on cornice. Nave ceiling has moulded timber cornice.

Tall, narrow tower arch with arch mouldings dying into plain chamfered responds. Nave walls plastered and marked out in ashlar courses. Two roundels of old glass in head of nave south-west window. Old corbel head set in north-west corner of nave; opening to road stairs blocked. C14 chancel arch with double chamfered arch and polygonal responds. Narrow blind arched recess immediately east of chancel arch; north chancel window set in wide arched opening with remains of splayed stone cill or string course. North doorway blocked: continuous roll moulding to arch. Remains of earlier arched opening cut by south-east chancel window: attached keeled shafts of reveal with stiff- leaf capitals and part of keeled roll-moulded arch remain. Stepped cill sedilia. Square headed recess with piscina in south-east corner of chancel.

Southwest chancel window also set in, and cutting through, earlier wider arch. C17 memorial slabs in chancel floor. Good wall monument to John Fowle (d.1732) with putti on open pediment supported on consoles. Remains of brass memorial in east reveal of south-east nave window, with lettered scrolls and shields. Font, octagonal, on step with quatrefoil decoration to risers: four lions against the stem, later bowl with shields.

Listing NGR: TM3466193171

Content

This is part of the Series: IOE01/0450 IOE Records taken by Bill Colman; within the Collection: IOE01 Images Of England

Rights

© Mr Bill Colman. Source: Historic England Archive

This photograph was taken for the Images of England project