Church of St Michael

The Newquay Parish Church of St Michael the Archangel is the Anglican parish church of Cornwall's most famous seaside town, a Grade II* listed building (designated in 1951) in the Diocese of Truro, the archdeaconry of Cornwall and the deanery of Pydar. Designed by Sir Ninian Comper, one of the greatest church architects of the 20th century, it stands as the successor to a Victorian chapel whose site now lies under the town's shopping streets.

Anglican worship came surprisingly late to Newquay. In the early 19th century, when the town's pilchard fishery and boatbuilding were at their height, worship meetings began in the town itself — the Baptists had the first building, in 1822, and the first Methodist chapel followed about 1833 — but Anglicans had to travel out to St Columb Minor parish church. The remedy came through Dr Hutton, the Revd Edward Bouverie Pusey — a leading figure of the Oxford Movement — and the Revd Nicholas Chudleigh, who built a chapel of ease in the heart of Newquay in 1858, in a Cornish Perpendicular style. Known as St Michael's from the dedication of a side chapel, it held its first service on 9 September 1858. The Newquay parish itself was created out of St Columb Minor in 1896, by which time the chapel had twice been enlarged with north and south aisles, raising its capacity to 500. Yet by the turn of the 20th century even that could not hold the summer congregations, and the cramped site allowed no further enlargement: a new church on a new site was inevitable. The old chapel served until 1911; its site later passed to the Women's Institute, then to F. W. Woolworth, who demolished it for a new store in 1937 — though "Church Path", the footpath running from Mount Wise to Bank Street, still remembers what once stood there.

The new church of St Michael the Archangel was begun in 1909 to Ninian Comper's designs, built through 1910, and — after setbacks and last-minute anxiety over whether the money would be gathered in time — consecrated on 12 July 1911 by the Bishop of Truro. The total cost, including the site, was just under £11,000. Comper's original plans included a tower at the east end, never built for want of funds; the present tower, designed by his son Sebastian Comper, was completed only in 1969, nearly sixty years after the church itself. It rises 105 feet 6 inches and was intended to carry a peal of bells and a clock, though funds for neither have ever been found. The tower, like much else, was the gift of the late Revd W. P. Mitchell.

The interior was enriched over the decades with stained glass, some designed by Ninian Comper himself, and with Comper's rood screen, installed in sections. The first organ of 1911 was second-hand from St Ia's Church, St Ives, incorporating pipework from yet another instrument; it was replaced in 1962 by a new organ by Nicholson of Worcester and Roger Yates, funded by a £15,000 legacy from Revd Mitchell — equivalent to some £280,000 today — and dedicated in 1961, the old organ going to St Paul's Church, Penzance. The present organ was installed in 2013 by Lance Foy, and its specification is recorded on the National Pipe Organ Register.

Disaster struck on St Peter's Day, 29 June 1993, when an arson attack destroyed large sections of the church. The restoration that followed, generously funded by English Heritage and carried out in collaboration with its conservation experts, returned the building to its former glory, and the church was rededicated in 1996.

Today St Michael's anchors the Benefice of Towan Blystra — taking Newquay's old Cornish name — formed in 2022 to bring together St Michael's with St Columb Minor & Colan and St Newlyn East; as of October 2024 the benefice is in a period of transition while a new Oversight Minister is recruited. Comper's great light-filled church, burned and reborn, remains the spiritual landmark of the surfing town.