Parish Church of St Michael

St Michael’s is the parish church of Camden, and is located (and easily missed) next to Sainsbury’s. It has a lively congregation and an active social outreach into the local community. History The nave was built in 1880 – 1 and the sanctuary in 1893 – 4 by the prolific church architect George Frederick Bodley (1827 – 1907) and Thomas Garner, with whom he had a 28-​year professional partnership. A planned tower was never built. St Michael’s subsumed the parish of All Saints in the 1950s, and since 2003 has been part of a team ministry with St Pancras Old Church, St Mary’s Somers Town and St Paul’s Camden Square. The church The church is orientated north-​south, with the liturgical west end facing the road. The church is built of yellow stock brick with stone dressings in the Decorated Gothic style. Both the west window and the clerestory windows over the aisles have delicate geometric tracery and have recently been restored. Inside, the stone-​lined interior consists of a nave of 5 bays, which draws the eye to the large sanctuary: Bodley did not include a chancel arch in the scheme, so the nave and sanctuary form a single, large space. The height of the nave is emphasised by the fact that the floor is lower than the street outside. There is a small, stone-​vaulted chapel to the north. The interior has decorative stencilling, but is need of repair. Fittings and furnishings are relatively limited, but include the original altar of 1880, and a selection of statues, some in the pre-​Raphaelite style, though that of St George dates from 1939; an attractive coloured pulpit; a marble altar and Easter Sepulchre in the north chapel; and a brass to Edward
Bainbridge Reynolds, incumbent, who died in 1907. The church has a flourishing congregation in the Anglo-​Catholic tradition, and the adjacent centre provides a range of outreach services for the local community.