Church of St Nicholas is a Grade II listed building in the St. Helens local planning authority area, England. First listed on 23 August 1985. Church.

Church of St Nicholas

WRENN ID
rusted-roof-auburn
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
St. Helens
Constituency
St Helens South and Whiston MP: Ms Marie Rimmer (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
23 August 1985
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Nicholas, New Street
OS grid reference
SJ 521 926
Coordinates
53.4283, -2.72107
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of St Nicholas is a church built between 1848 and 1849 by architects Sharpe and Paley, with a tower added in 1897. It features rubble walling with ashlar dressings and a slate roof. The church has a five-bay nave with aisles beneath a lean-to roof, a west tower, and a chancel that includes a south organ loft. The aisles are adorned with a cornice featuring beasts and a parapet, and they contain three-light windows with Geometrical tracery. The gabled south porch has a pointed entrance of one order. The clerestory is fitted with spherical triangle windows. The tower is supported by diagonal buttresses and has a west window with three lights and a transom, along with two-light louvred bell openings, an embattled parapet, and a low stair turret. The three-bay chancel includes gabled setback buttresses, a foliated cornice, and a parapet. There is a small north vestry, two windows of two lights on the north and south sides, and a three-light east window. The organ loft features a gable and a two-light window above a buttress, with an east window in the angle that has two lights under a half relieving arch.

Inside, the church has a high narrow nave supported by arcades on round piers, and a collar-truss roof on wall shafts resting on angel corbels. The chancel arch is set on corbelled wall shafts with foliated corbels and capitals. An octagonal font with clustered shafts is present, and the pulpit is corbelled from the wall with a pointed entrance and a canted stair turret in the north aisle. The chancel has an arch-braced collar roof, and the north and south stained glass windows date from the 1850s and 1890s. The east window, dated 1879, is likely by Holiday and Powell and features flanking commandment panels with nodding ogee heads.

Local climate

Church of St Nicholas sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,000 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 80% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 63% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 31 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 61% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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  • Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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  • Radon risk assessment
  • Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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