St. Michael's Church and Coffee shop are located on the Village Green...

The Church originates from the fourteenth century, having been built by the Berkeley family. The presence of the Norman font suggests that there was an earlier Church (although this was reputedly partially built into the North wall in the eighteenth century - reference Pevsners Gloucester). There was certainly a Saxon Church, as the Doomsday Book states "Stoche hath one priest". This was probably a wooden building, and there would have been some sort of priest's dwelling. Archaeological excavations have revealed Roman occupation in the parish. Coins found on the site suggest that this occupation was from about AD270-350. This covers the time that the Christian Constantine was emperor, so it is possible that there was Christian worship in the Parish at that time. Almost certainly later when St Augustine came to England. In the 1930's Arthur Mee in his 'Gloucestershire - The Kings England' described the village as 'One of the little places around Bristol, with a mediaeval Church between its green and busy railway junction. A quaint red-roofed building, with many gables, the Church has an embattled tower on the south side, opening with a plain massive arch with a pinnacled leafy hood, and in the simple inner doorway hangs an old studded door. Inside, the walls are cream, the roofs white and some of the walls are leaning. Square fluted pillars divide the Nave and the Aisle, and the Norman font, with a bowl like a great cushion capital, is partly built into a wall. The low altar rails are Jacobean. A l3th century window has a face among old fragments.' In more recent times the population in the parish increased considerably. This was due to building of the railway in 1858, Sir George White's "Aeroplane Works" from 1910 through two World Wars and further, and the general building programmes from the 1960's onwards. The Old School Rooms, given to the people of Stoke Gifford as part of the Duke of Beaufort's Estate, is now administered by the church. A coat of arms can be seen just under the apex of the eaves. The congregation at St Michael's increased correspondingly. In 1991 the Church of Christ the King was built at Bradley Stoke, still in the ecclesiastical parish of Stoke Gifford, with the Reverend Stephen Smith as its vicar and the Reverend David Widdows as the team rector. Each congregation had its own district council, both joining together in a parochial church council. Building of the new church was financed by parishioners throughout the diocese under the Diocesan Development Programme. Finance for equipment came from within the congregation and others as the result of an appeal fund for £50,000 in 1988. next>