Church Of St Nicholas

The Church of St Nicholas is a parish church largely dating to the 13th and 14th centuries, with significant restoration work and the addition of a south aisle in 1904. It is primarily constructed of granite rubble with ashlar dressings. The church consists of a late 13th-century west tower, a nave with a south aisle, and a chancel.

The two-stage west tower has a west window with three cusped lights and a paired foiled light to the bell chamber. An embattled parapet tops the tower, adorned with gargoyles. The 1904 south aisle is in an early Decorated style, featuring three stepped buttresses containing a door and two windows. A niche with a statue sits above the south door, with its moulded arch springing from a chamfer rather than a shaft. The aisle’s windows are two-light, with foiled openings and corbel heads. The south west window of the nave has three rounded-headed lights with a high relieving arch, demonstrating an early Perpendicular style.

The chancel is wider than the nave, built of fine rubble on a plinth. Its south side features a low side window and a late Decorated window of three foiled lights. The east window is a 19th-century restoration of an early Perpendicular five-light window with plain tracery. The four north windows are Victorian replacements with stilted hoodmoulds and corbel heads over three-light tracery.

Inside, a double-chamfered arch leads to the west tower. The nave arcade has three bays to the south aisle; this aisle dates to 1904, but the arcade is from the 14th century, relating to a previous aisle removed in 1796. It features short octagonal columns with heavy abaci supporting double-chamfered arches with corbel heads to the outer hoodmould. Traces of painting are visible on the piers. A narrow round arched doorway is on the north side, while the north windows are set in shafted recesses. There is no chancel arch. The nave and chancel have a single cambered trussed roof from the 19th century, with the chancel emphasized by additional struts and bosses.

The chancel contains late 17th and 18th-century wall memorials to members of the Palmer family, and two 19th-century decorated slates bearing the commandments above the altar. A large brass of 1393, commemorating Thomas and Katherine Walsh, is set into the chancel floor; it depicts a knight and lady within a border containing inscriptions and emblems of the evangelists, and records that they "in yer tyme made the Kirke of Anlep." Stained glass is in the west and east windows (1904), and older armorial glass is in the north windows.