Visitors book in St Michael the Archangel church, Halam.
"There is no mention of a church in the Domesday survey. The earliest fabric dates from the late C12th, namely the chancel arch and (modified) north chancel doorway.
The present building consists of a west tower (lower portions) and nave of the 13th Century, a chancel of the 12th to 14th Century, the upper portions of the tower of (probably) the 16th Century, and a south aisle and north porch of 1883-4. The south nave arcade is of the 13th Century indicating the former existence of a medieval aisle.
Halam has traditionally been a chapel-of-ease to Southwell Minster, but is now classed as a parish in its own right. Between 1975 and 2007 it was once again served by priests from Southwell Minster but since that date has had its own priest-in-charge."
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"St. Michael's is a Norman church dating from about 1100.
It has a chancel, nave, tower, south aisle and a north porch. The legend in the village is that the church was built with stone from Bolsover and Sherwood Forest that was intended for the building of the much larger church, Southwell Minster, just two miles further along the road. The story goes that the carts carrying the stone would rest at the bottom of the steep hill out of Halam before attempting the climb up to Southwell, and while the carters were taking "refreshments" at the local ale house, Halam villagers 'relieved' the carts of enough stone to build their own church.
The tower is massive, somewhat squat and two storeys high. It may have originally been intended to have a third storey - the size of the base certainly suggests so. Its pyramidal roof is a restoration but is probably typical of those on Norman towers of this sort. There is a tall pinnacle and a large grotesque waterspout gargoyle at each of its top corners. The west door into the tower has a pointed arch with a carved head on each capital, one male and one female. On the first floor is the belfry with three narrow two-light openings; the one on the front of the church is bricked up and covered by the large clock face.
A peculiarity of Halam church is that rather than being aligned along an East-West axis, it actually lies on South East-North West line. This may be due to an error of the original builders, a local idiosyncrasy or because it was aligned with an earlier, probably pagan building.
The south side has an aisle which was rebuilt during extensive Victorian 'restoration' of the church in 1884 with an Early English gothic style pointed-headed west window and three square-headed windows with stone tracery. At this time, the original south porch was demolished and the present north porch was added.
There are five square-headed windows in the chancel, each having a pair of delightful head carvings as the ends of the hood-mould or dripstone.
The is a fourteenth century 'leper window' in the north wall of the chancel, now built up on the inside and visible only from the outside. It is said that this window once had a pair of oak shutters that opened inwards and allowed wandering outcast lepers to see through the low window and take part in the services from outside."
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