Our Lady and St Michael

Introduction

Our Lady and St Michael in Alston is built of rock-faced sandstone with a steep slate roof, comprising a seven-bay nave and one-bay chancel.

Architecture and furnishings

Inside the church, a west gallery of pitch pine with organ, a chancel arch of two chamfered orders, a carved stone reredos, and an open timber roof with very slender scissor-braced trusses are present. I. & C. Hansom built the church in 1856. The bays are separated by buttresses with offsets. The nave windows are of 2 pointed lights with a quatrefoil over.

The chancel is lit by 2 narrow windows with cusped lights and a trefoil. The entrance is in the 6th bay from the east, through a doorway with moulded surround and 2-centred head. In the east wall is a window with geometrical tracery. The west wall has diagonal buttresses, with a central buttress with offsets partly supporting an open octagonal bellcote on a square base with an octagonal pointed stone cap.