St Michael & All Angels, Steeple

St Michael and All Angels is a Grade I parish church in Steeple, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, in the Diocese of Salisbury and the parish of Steeple with Tyneham.

Overview

Historic England records a church of twelfth-century origin, enlarged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, restored with the chancel rebuilt about 1855. The walls are stone and the roofs stone slate with coped gables. The plan is nave, chancel, north transept, south vestry, south porch and west tower. The two-stage sixteenth-century tower has a string course, a projecting north stair turret, a plain parapet, two-light mullioned belfry windows and a blocked west doorway with a large traceried window above. The south doorway is twelfth-century, of two orders with plain imposts. The south wall of the nave has three fifteenth-century square-headed two-light windows.

The seventeenth-century north transept has a four-centred arched doorway with the coat of arms of Lawrence quartering Washington over it. Internally the nave has a plastered barrel vault with moulded ribs and bosses bearing the same arms. The font is thirteenth-century. The Lawrence family, lords of the manor from the sixteenth century, had married into the Washington family in 1381; their arms incorporate the stars and stripes. The church stands in a small hamlet in the Purbeck Hills between Corfe Castle and Lulworth.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1152213
• British Listed Buildings: Parish Church of St Michael