The congregation, founded in 1867, initially met in a building in Archway Street that combined a school and a church. A temporary tin tabernacle was erected next to the school in 1878.[2]
The current building was erected in 1891–93. The architect was Charles Innes,[3] a member of the congregation,[2] who also designed the additions to the nave, chancel and north aisle of St Mary's Church, Barnes.[4]
A vestry, in a matching style, was added in 1936.[1]
Barbara Pym
The novelist Barbara Pym lived in Barnes from 1949 to 1961.[5] She worshipped at St Michael's, and was a member of the Parochial Church Council.[6] London Anglo-Catholic churches feature prominently in Pym's novels, and St Michael's is the model for the church in her 1955 novel Less Than Angels, where Pym describes High Mass on Whitsunday:[7][8]
So as to make sure of their favourite seat they had arrived rather too early, and there was nothing to do but look around the church which, like so many suburban churches, had been built at the beginning of the present century and had no ancient monuments or outstanding architectural features. Everything that could be was beautifully polished, from the altar candlesticks and lectern to the memorial tablets to late vicars, Ernest Hugh la Motte Spofford, George William Brandon, and James Edward Ferguson Law. The present incumbent, Laurence Folkes Tulliver, could not expect to be immortalized in brass for some years to come, for he was a man in vigorous early middle age who had introduced into the services many features which were new and startling to his congregation. He had been wise enough to do this gradually, so that by the time the church had won the right to have the mysterious letters DSCR after its name in Mowbray's Church Guide, most of the congregation were rather proud of themselves for having become High Church almost without knowing it. ... As it was a Festival the servers were in their lace-trimmed cottas and Father Tulliver was wearing a particularly splendid cope.
Notable clergy
Joe Hawes, later Dean of St Edmundsbury, served as priest-in-charge, and then team vicar, from 1996 to 2003[9]
^"Innes, Charles G D"(PDF). Local architects. Barnes and Mortlake History Society. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
^Holt, Hazel, A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym, (1990: Cardinal), pp 156 and 184-186.
^Smith, Robert, "Exploring London churches with Barbara Pym", in Bell, Hazel K (Ed), No Soft Incense: Barbara Pym and the Church, (2004: Barbara Pym Society), pp 14-16 at p 14.
^Pym, Barbara, Less Than Angels, (1955: Jonathan Cape), Chapter 7, pp 76 and 78.
^DSCR was code for D: daily celebration of the Eucharist; S: Sung Eucharist on Sundays; C: Confessions; and R: Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. Charles, Kate, "A mini-history of Anglo-Catholicism", in Bell, Hazel K (Ed), No Soft Incense: Barbara Pym and the Church, (2004: Barbara Pym Society), pp 17-18 at p 18.
