Architecture
William Burges adopted a French Gothic style, similar to that popular in the 13th century, for his design for St Michael and All Angels. The exterior is of small, regular blocks of mostly undressed yellow sandstone quarried from the nearby St Leonard's Forest. Bath Stone is also used sparingly as a dressing material. The building has a tower at the southwest corner with a shingled timber spire, a narthex at the western end (with a large rose window in the west face), a vestry on the north side and a chancel and nave. Carved panels surround the rose window, representing the Four Ages of Man. The roofs of the main body of the church are quite steep, and internally are built of pine in an arch formation with tie-beams and supported by king posts. Paired columns mounted on corbels support the chancel arch. Burges was responsible for many of the sculptures and carvings inside the church, and there are some stained glass windows from the 19th and 20th centuries. The east wall has a pair of lancet windows and a small rose window.
Read more about this topic: St Michael And All Angels Church, Lowfield Heath
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
—Audre Lorde (19341992)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad winds night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”
—John Ruskin (18191900)