Smethwick: St Michael & All Angels
Overview
Grid reference: SP 24 884
The church is built in an austere but not unsuccessful gothic style which employs a minimum of features and decoration. Lancet windows are used throughout, and all buttresses are represented by the slenderest pilaster strips. The west front faces the road and consists of a broad gable with square buttresses ending in small gablets at each side.
Visiting and facilities
Building is closed for worship
Building
Ground Plan Description and Dimensions
Ground plan:
Nave and chancel under one roof, nave of four and a half bays and chancel of two bays. Two bays of the nave and one of the chancel are up to clerestory height on the north side, but otherwise the nave has aisles and clerestory, with a low west narthex forming a baptistery flanked by porches. Owing to the falling ground, the chancel is raised high and thus a spacious room is contrived below.
Description of Archaeology and History
The church was designed by Arthur Edmund Street, the foundation stone was laid on 26th June 1891 and the church consecrated in 1892. A.E. Street, FRIBA, was a son of George Edmund Street, and was born in 1855; he died in 1938. Although his career is overshadowed by that of his father, especially in view of the several works of his father's which he finished (such as the addition of a tower to St. John's Church, Torquay (1884) or the enlargement of his church at Boyne Hill, Maidenhead (1907-11), he also designed new churches and secular buildings, including the church of St. Paul, Worcester (1885), the east end of Dewsbury Parish Church (1884), the nave of St. Mary Newbury (1911- now demolished) and the schools for St. James the Less, Westminster. He trained with his father, set up practice in 1881 in London and retired in 1924.
Exterior Description
The church is built in an austere but not unsuccessful gothic style which employs a minimum of features and decoration. Lancet windows are used throughout, and all buttresses are represented by the slenderest pilaster strips. The west front faces the road and consists of a broad gable with square buttresses ending in small gablets at each side. Between these is a great semi-circular retaining arch framing an arrangement of five lancet windows. In the centre is a group of three, all with trefoiled heads and all of equal height, contained within a pair of small projecting vertical strips of brickwork which terminate in tiny gablets where they touch the arch. Outside these are two single lancets, slightly shorter but also with trefoiled heads. The inner group is further emphasised by a shallow cusped moulding forming an arch above them and containing a cross of bricks in relief. Below the windows runs a low narthex under a pent roof which houses porches at each end and the baptistery in the middle. The doorways have simple segmental arched heads and the baptistery has six small rectangular lights placed in a row close under the eaves.
The flanking walls of the church are not, as might be expected in so simple a building, entirely symmetrical. The south is the more straight forward, and has an aisle running almost the whole length of both nave and chancel. The four western bays of this have panels of brickwork recessed under segmental arches, the westernmost blind and the next three with triple lancet windows, all of the same height. The blind west bay is less wide than the others. The fifth bay has a small doorway at the head of a flight of steps which gives access to the east end of the aisle just by the south chapel, and the chapel itself then has a blind south wall with a chimney stack above the western part. The clerestory of nave and chancel is uniform, with triple lancets, the central taller, in every bay save the narrower western bay, which is blind. The clerestory windows are set within recessed panels.
The north side of the church is a mirror image of this for the first three bays from the west, and then there is a three-bay projection rising through both aisle and clerestory levels. This is roofed with three hipped roofs matching the bays of the main building, and two bays have windows like those of the aisles in the lower part and like those of the clerestory in the upper part. The eastern bay has a plain pair of lancets below and is blind above. In the angle of this projection with the chancel is a small polygonal turret housing a spiral staircase leading from the north chancel aisle down to a large room below the chancel. This room has two segmental-headed windows in the east with a buttress between. High in the east wall is a large window for the chancel consisting of five graded lancets with trefoiled heads, and this is framed by a segmental relieving arch. The gable above has a false gable about four feet below the real gable, the space between being filled with brick arcading against a plaster ground. The vestry chimney on the north side is linked to the chancel wall by a small arch which provides a housing for the single bell.
Building Fabric and Features
Stained Glass
1941
The east windows are filled with opaque glass
Stained Glass
1924-37
The nave windows are filled with opaque glass
Stained Glass
1912
The east window of the south chapel depicts The Manifestation of Christ.
Stained Glass
1906-16
The six baptistery windows show single figures of Saints and others.
Interior
Interior Description
The interior is perhaps more successful than the exterior, chiefly because of Street's expbitation of a motif which Leonard Stokes had used two years earlier in his church of St. Clare, Sefton Park, in Liverpool. This is the provision of tall arches rising through two storeys so that they frame both the arcade and the clerestory windows within one composition. To be sure, Street's design is not carried to its full conclusion as Stokes did (by providing passage aisles below and recessed arches framing the windows above, the responds which are themselves pierced by a triforium passage), but it is interesting to note that one of the unusual features of Street's Smethwick church, the round archos to the nave arcades within the overall pointed arches, is paralleled at Sefton Park. Street's church is made rather impressive by this one simple feature, and his use of two mullions between the clerestory lancets to give, as it were, a Gothic Diocletian window is a nice touch. One advantage which Smethwick has over Sefton Park is that the arches are articulated by being of exposed brick and stone against a plaster background, stone being simply used for plain capitals to the arcades which do not interrupt the lines of the arches but simply mark the diversion of the arcade arches from the piers which continue upwards to carry the arches at clerestory level.
The west wall internally is also quite successful, although the way in which the narrow western bays of the arcades are simply given half arches which lean against it is visually unsettling. In the lower part are three round arches of brick, the central one wider than the others and opening into the baptistery, and the outer pair closed by oak screens. Higher in the walls the three lancets are grouped under a single round arch and the single lancets at each side both have their own pointed arch. The roof, which runs through the church uniformly from west to east, is also a good though plain feature, and has a shallow pitch with collars supported by widely curving arch braces. The five east lancets are set within a wide round arch which continues a theme now familiar from other parts of the building. The arcades which have already been discussed continue across the semi- transeptal projection on the north side, and this is arranged as a chapel in the two western bays and a vestry with the organ above in the eastern bay, with arches at two levels communicating with the nave and chancel. A comparison with the much grander use of the same idea at St. Augustine, Kilburn, might perhaps be too ambitious.
The chancel is set six steps higher than the nave, partly no doubt in view of the High Church ritual for which the church was intended but also to allow enough headroom for the fairly large parish room below it. It is separated from the nave by a low stone wall which incorporates the pulpit at he south end. A small chapel lies beyond a screen at the east end of the suth aisle and in the south wall of the sanctuary a wide arch spans recess for sedilia and piscina. This arch has a slight upward twist in the middle of the moulding which is the only, and very minimal, sign in the church if any awareness of the Arts and Crafts movement. On the other hand, the reredos and panelling on the east wall of the chancel, both executed in alabaster, are in the sort of spiky gothic which is more usually associated with at least thirty years earlier.
Fixtures and fittings
Altar
c.1920
The altar is of oak, very long with a traceried front and emblems of wheat and grapes carved on the front.
Reredos
1902
The reredos and flanking arcaded panelling is made of brownish-pink alabaster, of three bays with cusped arches and a gablet over each; within these are reliefs, probably of plaster, but in any case painted, showing The Annunciation, The Crucifixion and Mary Magdalene with Christ in the Garden; on pedestals above are St. Michael and two Angels.
Pulpit
c.1910
The pulpit is semi-circular, of stone with three recessed alabaster panels.
Lectern
The lectern is an oak eagle.
Font (object)
The font is of stone, circular and possibly designed by Street, with recessed curved panels round the upper part and a cross in relief on the east face; the cover is of oak, quite plain and slightly curved.
Organ (object)
The organ is a two-manual instrument with pedals, seven stops on the Great, seven on the Swell and two on the Pedal; by Walter James Bird and Son, Selly Oak, Birmingham.
Churchyard
Grid reference: SP 24 884
Burial and War Grave Information
The church/building is consecrated.
It is unknown whether the churchyard has been used for burial.
It is unknown whether the churchyard is used for burial.
It is unknown whether the churchyard has war graves.
National Heritage record for England designations
There are no records of National Heritage assets within the curtilage of this site.
Environment
Ancient, Veteran & Notable Trees
Caring for God's Acre is a conservation charity working to support groups and individuals to investigate, care for, and enjoy the wildlife and heritage treasures found within churchyards and other burial grounds. Look on their website for information and advice and please contact their staff directly. They can help you manage this churchyard for people and wildlife.
To learn more about all the species recorded against this church, go to the Burial Ground Portal within the NBN Atlas. You can check the spread of records through the years, discovering what has been recorded and when, plus what discoveries might remain to be uncovered.
There are no records of Ancient, Veteran or Notable Trees within the curtilage of this site.
Renewables
| Renewable | Installed |
|---|---|
| Solar PV Panels | No |
| Solar Thermal Panels | No |
| Biomass | No |
| Wind Turbine | No |
| Air Source Heat Pump | No |
| Ground Source Heat Pump | No |
| Ev Charging | No |
Species summary
There are no records of species within the curtilage of this site.
Caring for God's Acre is a conservation charity working to support groups and individuals to investigate, care for, and enjoy the wildlife and heritage treasures found within churchyards and other burial grounds. Look on their website for information and advice and please contact their staff directly. They can help you manage this churchyard for people and wildlife.
To learn more about all the species recorded against this church, go to the Burial Ground Portal within the NBN Atlas. You can check the spread of records through the years, discovering what has been recorded and when, plus what discoveries might remain to be uncovered.
'Seek advice' Species
More information on species and action to be taken upon discovery.
Caring for God's Acre is a conservation charity working to support groups and individuals to investigate, care for, and enjoy the wildlife and heritage treasures found within churchyards and other burial grounds. Look on their website for information and advice and please contact their staff directly. They can help you manage this churchyard for people and wildlife.
To learn more about all the species recorded against this church, go to the Burial Ground Portal within the NBN Atlas. You can check the spread of records through the years, discovering what has been recorded and when, plus what discoveries might remain to be uncovered.
Further information
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