Church of St Michael the Archangel, Aldershot

The Church of St Michael the Archangel is the parish church of Aldershot in Hampshire — a Grade II listed building beside Manor Park whose story begins with land personally owned by Alfred the Great, runs through Spanish Armada beacons, body-snatchers and a Nell Gwynne legend, and ends with the British Army transforming a village church into the mother church of "the Home of the British Army."

The land on which St Michael's stands was owned by King Alfred himself, who left it at his death to the monks of Winchester Cathedral. The present church was probably built around 1120 — almost certainly replacing an earlier church on the site — and its earliest mention, in 1121, concerns wax for candles. It appears again in 1171, regarding an annual payment by the parish of Aldershot to the Priory of St Swithun for the maintenance of three lights burning continually before the High Altar there. The medieval centuries were eventful and sometimes violent: in 1399 the parish priest, John Bertone, was severely attacked while officiating in the church, and by 1400 the building was in a state of collapse — Bishop William of Wykeham sequestrated the Rectory of Crondall to pay for repairs, though the church was reportedly still in poor condition eighty years later. In 1481 John Awbrey pledged "My Manor at Aldershot" for a £126 loan from the London Charterhouse to restore the church; he and his wife are buried in the old chancel, now the Lady Chapel, as is Sir John White (c.1500–1573), Lord Mayor of London in 1563–64. White's fine memorial brass was probably made shortly before his death — the date is not inscribed — and his will of 29 May 1573 directs "that there be sett in the wall, nigh that place where my bodie is buried... the plat of Brasse with my armes and my wives... with the border of Allibaster stone alredie made for it." He was buried at the north-east corner of the old chancel beneath his funerary helm and crest.

The registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, begun by William Shakford in 1571, are still in use. The Civil War saw a curate, Thomas Hollinshead, ejected in 1641, and in 1645 Royalist troops invaded the village of Aldershot and set it afire — but St Michael's was spared. From the Restoration era comes the parish's most colourful legend: that Nell Gwynne, journeying from Portsmouth to London in 1678, stopped in the area and gave birth to a stillborn child of Charles II, attended by "Old Mother Squall" who lived near the church, the child buried beneath a tree in the churchyard — said to be the ancient yew near the lychgate, which an 1859 guide claimed was once "the admiration of the whole neighbourhood." The King was said to have granted the church £200 a year for the assistance, though no record of it has ever been found.

The churchyard itself stands on land donated by John-atte-Halle by deed of 24 October 1409, approached through a lychgate given by Mr and Mrs Walter Finch in 1954. In 1527 the chaplain Thomas Hore met his churchwardens to discuss fencing the churchyard against irreverent behaviour "such as May dancing and ribald talk." The jurist Charles Viner (1678–1756), founder of the Vinerian Professorship at Oxford, is buried here with his wife and has a wall memorial in the church. The clock and a turret bell were installed in 1799, and in 1801 the fear of body-snatching produced the churchyard's distinctive feature: graves covered with brick arches of hand-made local brick, built between 1801 and 1856 to thwart the "Resurrectionists" then plying their trade. At least two thousand parishioners have been buried here since 1571, though the ground is not overly filled with memorials; four soldiers were buried here in the early 1850s when the newly arrived Army had no burial ground of its own, and in 1884 the Lord of the Manor gave land on the north side for the Newcome family burial ground.

The Revd John West, appointed the parish's first Perpetual Curate in 1818, went on to become the missionary founder of the Church in Canada. Then, in 1855, during the Crimean War, the Army came to Aldershot — and everything changed. The town exploded in size, Holy Trinity church was built nearer the Camp, and from 1859 to 1912 St Michael's itself underwent continuous development: the building was extended in 1859, the nave restored and north aisle added in 1868, and in 1912 a new nave, chancel and north arcade were added to a design by Sir Thomas Jackson RA. The tower, the chancel and the Lady Chapel extension of 1380 are the only ancient parts to survive — indeed the "Lady Chapel" is the original church itself, the arches to its left once its outer wall, and the main door of the original church now gives access to the tower.

That tower rests on large blocks of sarsen stone over London clay, built of local "galleted" ironstone with flints and narrow red brick dressings; its upper part was rebuilt in the reign of Elizabeth I, when it formed part of the chain of beacons raised against the threatened Spanish invasion. The tower clock was made by James Styles of Odiham and donated by the Revd George West in 1810, its dial restored in 1966. The chancel contains monuments to the White and Tichborne families: the wall memorial to Lady Ellen Tichborne was moved from the old chancel during the Victorian extension, while that of her sister Lady Mary Tichborne, who died in 1620 as first wife of Sir Walter Tichborne, remains in its original position. Stained glass remembers the Newcomes.

The bells carry their own royal footnote. The first was hung in the late fourteenth century, with bells added in 1611 and 1624 — probably given by Sir Walter Tichborne, whose son James, born 1611, was a godchild of King James I, who travelled to Aldershot for the christening at St Michael's; the second bell may be a memorial to Sir Walter's wife Mary, who died in 1621. When the church was enlarged in 1911 the oldest bell was recast and three added to make six, and after the First World War two trebles were donated by soldiers of Aldershot Camp in memory of comrades killed in the conflict — the "Soldiers' Bells." The light ring of eight was recast and rehung by John Taylor of Loughborough in 1960.

The parish's human stories run from Edgar Sheldrake, baptised here in 1864, who became a first-class cricketer, to Alfred Toye VC, who married Flora Robertson here in 1918, and the much-loved comedian Arthur English, married at the church in 1977 and given his funeral service here in 1995. In the early twentieth century the parish founded two daughter churches — St Augustine's on Holly Road in North Town, which continues, and St Aidan's on Kings Road in the West End, now a private residence. Nine centuries after the monks of Winchester received Alfred's land, St Michael's remains Aldershot's parish church: the one building that watched the village become the camp, and the camp become the town.