St Michael and All Angels, Stanton

St Michael and All Angels stands on Church Lane in Stanton, a village under the Cotswold escarpment, a few steps from its medieval cross. The church was built and rebuilt from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, keeps medieval wall paintings, and was furnished in the early twentieth century by Sir Ninian Comper. It is listed Grade I.

History

The listing traces the church through the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The north arcade has round pillars with scalloped capitals and semicircular arches; the south arcade has octagonal pillars and four-centred arches, with grotesque heads above. The three-stage west tower carries an octagonal stone spire, corner gargoyles and a crenellated parapet.

Blomfield and Comper

In 1874 the chancel was rebuilt and dormer windows put into the roof, and the listing dates the north aisle to 1896; it credits Blomfield with late nineteenth-century work here without saying which. In the early twentieth century the church architect Sir Ninian Comper came to Stanton. In 1918 he reset the church's medieval glass in the east window together with new glass of his own, and in 1923 he made the chancel screen and rood loft, carved with a pelican in her piety and set with statues. The reredos in the chancel is carved as a war memorial.

The village round it

Stanton owes its looks partly to Sir Philip Stott, a Lancashire architect of cotton mills who bought the Stanton Court estate in 1906 and restored the village; Tewkesbury Borough Council's conservation area appraisal records his restoration, down to the street lamps lit from his own generator in 1907. The Cotswold Way now comes down through the village past the end of Church Lane.

What to see

Stand at the west end first and look east, past the two different arcades, to Comper's screen and loft and the glass beyond.

• Comper's chancel screen and rood loft of 1923, with the pelican in her piety
• The east window of 1918, medieval glass reset among Comper's own
• In the north transept, medieval wall paintings and two painted panels from a medieval screen
• The seventeenth-century octagonal pulpit with its sounding board, and a reading desk made from fifteenth-century carving
• The early sixteenth-century octagonal font, panelled with quatrefoils
• A western gallery on four octagonal pillars, and two benefaction boards
• At the north-west end of the nave, bench ends worn into rings; the story goes that they are the marks of the chains of shepherds' dogs brought to church

Outside, the south porch has an ogee-headed niche with a statue, and the churchyard has several listed monuments, among them a line of six headstones. South of the chancel stands the churchyard war memorial of 1919, also by Comper and listed Grade II in its own right: a tapering octagonal shaft whose carved head shows the Crucifixion, the Virgin and Child, and St George and the dragon.

Visiting

The church is open daily from 9.30am to 5pm. Services are at 11.15am on the first Sunday of the month (Matins) and on the third and fourth Sundays (Holy Communion). Stanton shares a parish with Snowshill, in the Winchcombe Team Ministry, and the team vicar can be reached on 01242 621592, the number on the church's A Church Near You page. Entry is free.

Getting there

The church is on Church Lane, just off the High Street (WR12 7NE). Park in the parish council car park next to the cricket ground; the Mount Inn's car park is for its customers, and visitors are asked not to park in the village centre. Pulhams bus 606, between Cheltenham, Winchcombe and Broadway, stops at the Stanton turns on the main road, about half a mile away, Monday to Saturday only; there is no Sunday bus.

On foot, the Stanton, Snowshill and the edge walk starts and ends in the village close to the church, and the Cotswold Way: Broadway to Wood Stanway walk comes down from Shenberrow through Stanton past the end of Church Lane, both on the Cotswold Way.

Nearby

The village cross is at the bottom of Church Lane, and above the village the Cotswold Way climbs to the Iron Age ramparts of Shenberrow Camp. Over the hill, Snowshill has St Barnabas Church and the National Trust's Snowshill Manor. South along the edge is the little church of Hailes, with its own medieval wall paintings, and towards Broadway St Eadburgha's is another old church outside its village. For a night nearby, Buckland Manor is a country-house hotel a couple of miles north-east.