Crawley Old Town: FORTY PICTURES: St Michael and All Angels Church (Lowfield Heath)

St Michael and All Angels Church is a church in Lowfield Heath, a depopulated former village in the Borough of Crawley.

Work started in 1867, and the foundation stone was laid on 15 July of that year. The consecration ceremony took place on 1 December 1868. Despite its small size, the village continued to thrive for the next 80 years, and the church was considered its "architectural highlight". Its architectural merit received official recognition on 21 June 1948, when it was listed at Grade II*.

A special service was held at the church in 1989 to commemorate the loss of the village. A plaque was unveiled by the entrance door: “In commemoration of a service held in this church at Lowfield Heath on the 30th September 1989 for the occasion of a reunion of those who formed the village community at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and whose homes and village were subsequently displaced by the development of Gatwick International Airport

The village fell into steady decline in the 1950s when Gatwick Aerodrome was expanded to become London Gatwick Airport—London's second international airport. Between the early 1950s, when the Government announced its decision, and the early 1970s, when the White Lion public house and the last few houses were demolished, every original building in the village, except the church, was destroyed. Following the rapid expansion of nearby Crawley, and the extension of its ancient parish to include several churches and large parts of the New Town, St Michael and All Angels was transferred from the Parish of Charlwood to the Parish of Crawley, thereby coming under the control of the parish church of St John the Baptist's and the Diocese of Chichester. This happened despite the church and the remains of the village still being administratively in Surrey. The area was transferred to the newly created county of West Sussex in 1974, removing this anomaly. Since 1 April 1974, therefore, the church has been within the Borough of Crawley.

William Burges adopted a French Gothic style, similar to that popular in the 13th century, for his design for St Michael and All Angels. The exterior is of small, regular blocks of mostly undressed yellow sandstone quarried from the nearby St Leonard's Forest. Bath Stone is also used sparingly as a dressing material. The building has a tower at the southwest corner with a shingled timber spire, a narthex at the western end (with a large rose window in the west face), a vestry on the north side and a chancel and nave. Carved panels surround the rose window, representing the Four Ages of Man. The roofs of the main body of the church are quite steep, and internally are built of pine in an arch formation with tie-beams and supported by king posts. Paired columns mounted on corbels support the chancel arch. Burges was responsible for many of the sculptures and carvings inside the church, and there are some stained glass windows from the 19th and 20th centuries. The east wall has a pair of lancet windows and a small rose window.