GreatBadminton'sExterior
St. Michael and All Angels, Great Badminton has a plain exterior, which deceives the mind into thinking that the interior must also be as simple. This is not the case!
The church is approached up the drive directly from the eastern end of the village, which leads to the West Front of Badminton House to the north, and to the east the iron gates painted in Beaufort Blue, which lead to the Church. You walk along a path with a perfectly manicured hornbeam hedge on your left and on your right a timeless tranquil rural scene of a ha-ha and grazing horses in paddocks, reminiscent of a Stubbs landscape. It is like entering another world.
Turning to the north you will see directly ahead of you the Italianate rustic-style Church with its plain stonework and tower at the west end of the building, the porch with its original Georgian lantern, and to the right the five distinctive south windows in Georgian Palladian round-topped style. In front of the south façade there is a small graveyard where the 8th, th, 10th and 11th Dukes and their departed Duchesses lie.
The church is entered through an arch to the Outer Porch, which once was enclosed with a glass roof - sadly long-since removed. The Inner Porch Door marks the entrance to the church itself.
