St Michael's, Sheerwater

It's indicative of the curious story relating to the history of Surrey churches I am trying to uncover, that the most interesting church of three I visited on one recent research trip was neither of the two medieval ones. Holy Trinity, Send, and St Nicholas’s Pyrford, were both churches that the Catholic Movement barely glanced at. Pyrford was the subject of a very conservative restoration in 1869 which resulted in choir stalls and barely any other change, while Send has no central aisle in the nave, but a row of pews with a tiny passageway either side, which would have given any Ecclesiologist an attack of the vapours. No, the pick of the trip was, of all places, St Michael’s, Sheerwater. Holy Trinity Woodham had planted a tin church of St Michael on Woking’s Sheerwater estate in 1952; the permanent church, opened in 1976, was a joint venture between Woodham parish and the local Methodist Circuit, and is a very rare example of a post-war daughter church of an older Anglo-Catholic one: it shows how Anglo-Catholicism could be translated into this kind of setting, at this kind of time. The church is largely a hall with a few Christian symbols, except for the sanctuary which can be screened off for secular events. Here we find a plain aumbry and icons of the Blessed Virgin and St Michael, what appears to be some older (Methodist?) furniture, an abstract modern window of the Cross, and some of the weirdest church furnishings I have ever seen. The set consists of altar, lectern, font, and credence table; the first three are each organised around a cube, partly wood with two sides that seem to be tin or zinc, tapering inwards to a square hole. The pieces sit on concrete feet. They must surely be home-made. Who designed them? Lighting the sanctuary is a strip of stained glass windows which can only be seen looking outwards; they show fish, crosses, a flaming wheel, and a parade of coloured Roman chasubles. What is this about? I've never seen anything else like it. The church now retains little of its Catholic practice, and these clues are all that remains. Outside the church door there is a little concrete statue of St Michael, looking like a garden ornament.