St. Michael and All Angels Church, Bassett

St Michael and All Angels Church, Bassett, is an Anglican parish church of the late nineteenth century standing on the eastern side of Bassett Avenue in Southampton — part of what Pevsner and Lloyd called "the splendid tree-lined route into Southampton from Winchester, London and the north". It belongs to the parish of North Stoneham and Bassett, where it has the largest congregation of the parish's three churches, and behind its modest red-brick exterior hides one of the more surprising interiors in Hampshire.

The parish's roots run back to the early ninth century, when North Stoneham was known as "Stonam Abbatis" — Abbots Stoneham — and was attached to Hyde Abbey at Winchester, the parish stretching from the River Itchen in the east toward Chilworth and Bassett Green in the west. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s the manor was acquired by Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and in 1599 the Wriothesleys sold the estate to Sir Thomas Fleming, whose descendants held the advowson until 1997 — four centuries of one family's patronage. Until the late nineteenth century Bassett remained part of North Stoneham parish, served by the rector of St Nicolas' Church; the Reverend Elliott Kenworthy-Browne, rector from 1886 to 1912, would often walk more than ten miles a day to meet the needs of his scattered parishioners. By the mid-1880s Bassett had grown into what looked like a well-to-do suburb of substantial middle-class villas — yet Kenworthy-Browne observed that three-quarters of its population of 800 were poor, chiefly mechanics and labourers.

When Kenworthy-Browne arrived in 1886, mission services were being held in a small coach-house near the Redhill brickyards; a mission room in Winchester Road opened in 1888. The permanent church owed its site to a legacy in the will of John Brown Willis Fleming of Stoneham Park, who left the plot on Bassett Avenue. The new church was designed by Edward Prioleau Warren, and Violet Fleming laid the foundation stone on 29 September 1897 — Michaelmas Day. Built in two stages as the money ran out, it was completed in May 1910 by the contractors Messrs Holloway Bros of London at a total cost of £4,139, and was consecrated in 1911. When finished it was regarded as a quite outstanding example of its kind, attracting visitors from as far away as America.

The exterior — plain red stock brick with Monks Park stone dressings to doors and windows, a slated roof and a small bell-turret on the western gable — is, by common consent, not particularly impressive. The surprise is within: a concrete vaulted roof supported on stone ribs, which led Pevsner and Lloyd to judge the church "an intriguing and distinguished design internally". The nave runs four broad rib-vaulted bays, separated from the chancel by a rood screen surmounted by a carving of the Crucifixion. The east window, depicting Christ flanked by the archangels Michael and Gabriel, was the first stained-glass window ever made by Frank O. Salisbury, who went on to fame as a society painter and glass designer. The west window, showing the Archangel Michael defeating Satan, was designed by Francis Skeat and given in 1962 by Hector Young, a former mayor of Southampton, in memory of his wife Ethel, who was killed in the Blitz in September 1940.

The church has grown and been cared for by stages: an assembly room — now the choir vestry — was added by 1934, and a new altar with oak-panelled reredos in 1937. Classified Grade B in 1962, it was revised to Grade II listed in December 1969. A £13,000 programme of re-roofing and damp protection began in 1980, the Victorian pews gave way to flexible seating in 2011, and after the church was placed on the Heritage at Risk Register in October 2014, a £90,000 grant under the Chancellor's £15 million listed places of worship roofs scheme was awarded in March 2015, with the repair work completed in October 2016.

Worship at St Michael's is middle-to-high and strongly Eucharistic: Sunday services at 8am (Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion) and 10am (Common Worship Sung Eucharist), Choral Evensong on the second and fourth Sundays at 6.30pm, a midweek Eucharist on Thursday mornings and a Taizé service on the last Friday of most months. The church's choral tradition is exceptional for a parish church: the all-age Senior Choir sings the standard cathedral repertoire, supports the Sunday Eucharist and sings Evensong twice a month — and regularly deputises at both Winchester Cathedral and Chichester Cathedral while the cathedral choirs are on holiday, travelling further afield each August for a longer cathedral residence. A Junior Choir joins the Senior Choir at two services each month. The organ, built by Rushworth and Dreaper in 1937, is a fine example of a four-rank extension instrument, totally enclosed in two expression chambers on the north side of the choir: its four ranks — open diapason, lieblich gedackt, salicional and trumpet — create twenty-five speaking stops over two manuals and pedals. It was refurbished in 2011 by Griffiths & Co.

The parish, renamed North Stoneham and Bassett, now encompasses North Stoneham, the whole of Bassett, Bassett Green north of Bassett Green Road, the part of Chilworth within the M3/M27 triangle — and Southampton Airport. The current rector, the Reverend Sheena Williams, was invested by the Bishop of Southampton on 3 February 2017; raised in Linlithgow near Edinburgh and holding a law degree from Aberdeen and Pierre Mendès-France University in France, she trained for ministry at STETS in Salisbury, was ordained in 2010, and served at Swaythling and Chandler's Ford before coming to the parish. With an associate pioneer minister, a curate, two honorary assistant clergy and two licensed lay ministers, she shares the ministry of the three churches — St Michael and All Angels, St Nicolas and All Saints — carrying forward the work begun by the tireless walking rector of the 1880s.