Norwich, St Michael at Plea

St Michael at Plea, redundant and now used as a café [chancel] and Christian bookshop [nave] and because of this most of interest here is the exterior.

ST MICHAEL-AT-PLEA, Queen Street. All Perp. W tower lowered (no bell-openings) but with thick crocketed pinnacles. N and S transepts, S chancel chapel, two-storeyed S porch with niches l. and r. of the entrance, St Michael and the Dragon in its spandrels and a niche between the upper windows. Base frieze of shields in N aisle and N transept. Nave roof arch-braced with embattled wall-plate, longitudinal arched braces, and angels along the ridge. - FONT. Octagonal, simple, with demi-figures of angels against the underside. - FONT COVER. C17. With eight columns, an openwork obelisk in the middle, and a tall top with an obelisk and a dove. - COMMUNION RAIL. Jacobean or a little later. With vertically symmetrical balusters. More of them are re-used in the west GALLERY. - SOUTH DOOR. Excellently traceried. - SWORD AND MACE RESTS. Wrought iron; C18. - PLATE. Chalice given in 1691; two Flagons (Norwich) 1667-8: Almsbasin, inscribed 1694; Paten (London) 1708-9. - MONUMENTS. Jacques de Hem d. 1603. Inscription in black-letter and, to its r., panel of the same size with kneeling figures incised, a pediment over the whole with shovel, pick, skull, cross-bones. The odd thing is that the monument is folded round an obtuse angle at the W wall.

The fact that the Archdeacon holds his courts in the 15th-century church in Queen Street has lengthened its name to St Michael-at-Plea. Its low tower has battlements and leafy pinnacles, and its porch is adorned with niches, the spandrels of the entrance arch having worn carvings of St Michael fighting the dragon. The old door into the church has rich tracery. There are golden-winged angels holding shields on the ridge of the fine 15th-century roof, and the medieval font has a quaint canopied Jacobean cover with a dove perched on the top. There are shields and saints in a medley of old glass, and a stone on the wall is engraved with portraits of an Elizabethan family, parents and ten children, kneeling at an altar. The treasure here is a number of fine panel paintings of the 14th century, said to be part of the old rood screen. Seven now in the reredos are of the Annunciation, the Betrayal, two Crucifixions, St Thomas, Erasmus, and St Margaret standing on a dragon. One showing the Resurrection is in a recess over the pulpit.

Flickr.