St Michael and All Angels

Sky West and Crooked is a British romantic drama, released in the United Kingdom in January 1966, directed by John Mills and starring Hayley Mills and Ian McShane. In the United States it was called Gypsy Girl.⁷ Wikipedia, citing a Turner Classic Movies article, states that it was shot on location in and around Little Badminton.⁷

In that article Lorraine LoBianco quotes John Mills’s autobiography. Mills recalled a search across England and Wales for a village with a church, a churchyard, a green, a pub and cottages he could hold in one shot. The place they chose was Badminton. It suited the picture except that, in his words, “the church had no tower.” The production built one of steel scaffolding and fibreglass.⁸

A location study on ReelStreets identifies the church scenes at St Michael and All Angels, Little Badminton, and treats the tower in the film as a prop. The same study also records locations in Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire, including studio work, so the film was not confined to this churchyard.⁹

Historic England records an overhanging timber bellcote at the west end, and the list entry does not describe a tower.¹ That is consistent with the reason Mills gave for building one. The photographs on this page show the bellcote, not a tower.

Historic England lists the church at Grade I, first listed on 3 March 1961, under the name Church of St Michael and All Angels. The statutory addresses are the church and Little Badminton. The civil parish is Hawkesbury, in South Gloucestershire. The National Grid Reference is ST 80170 84252.¹ Wikidata gives the coordinate 51°33′24.480″N, 2°17′14.712″W, and records the Diocese of Gloucester.²

The list description, which Historic England marks as generated from a legacy system, calls it an Anglican church of Early English character: early 13th century, restored in the 14th century, with north windows of the 19th. The walls are rubble, rendered on the north and west, with freestone dressings, under a Cotswold stone slate roof. The plan is a nave with a sanctuary and a north aisle.¹

On the south are two two-light windows with cinquefoil heads and a rere-arch. The 19th-century north windows are of three lights with trefoil heads. The east window is 14th-century, of three lights with trefoil heads, an ogee-shaped rere-arch and a hood mould. The south door has a simple round arch. At the west end of the north aisle is a half-hexagonal shaft with a grotesque figure. Inside, a four-bay arcade of pointed arches stands on octagonal piers; the western pier and the respond have capitals. There is a trefoil-headed piscina in an ogee-headed opening, and a Perpendicular octagonal font.¹

South Gloucestershire Council’s conservation-area document places the church to the north of the village on rising ground, and agrees on the early 13th-century date, the 14th-century restoration, a 19th-century alteration, the round south door and the timber bellcote. It says the 19th-century work inserted two additional windows. The village, it says, lies within the Badminton Estate, just north of Great Badminton, with the parkland of Badminton House adjoining to the east. Little Badminton was designated a conservation area on 30 March 1983.³

The Badminton Benefice lists St Michael and All Angels, Little Badminton, among its churches, and lists St Michael and All Angels, Great Badminton, separately.⁴ Historic England’s list entry 1155177 is another Grade I church of the same dedication, at Badminton Park. This page is only the Little Badminton building.¹⁰

The parish’s own note describes the nave and the north aisle as almost equal in size, and says that only the west pier and the respond have capitals. It calls the westernmost window on the south much plainer than the others, and records a suggestion that this is impoverished work from a building stopped by the Black Death in 1348.⁵ Historic England’s list entry does not make that claim.¹ The suggestion is the parish’s, and the cause is to be confirmed.

The same note records a second piscina, with a restored head, by the altar; an octagonal Perpendicular font bowl with quatrefoils in the panels; and a chalice and paten cover of 1715 by Simon Pantin. It places the church on the north side of a village green where a round dovecote stands. It states that Little Badminton is not open except on days of services.⁵ Times change. This page does not copy a rota, a telephone number or an email address. Current arrangements are on A Church Near You.