Church Of St Nicholas

Church of Saint Nicholas, Solihull

The Church of Saint Nicholas stands in dense woodland north of Solihull, originally part of the manor of Elmdon. It was built in 1780-1 by John Standbridge of Warwick, a notable architect of the period whose Neoclassical designs showed the influence of the Wyatts. The church was commissioned by Abraham Spooner, a Birmingham banker who purchased the Elmdon estate in 1760 and began building the neighbouring Neoclassical Elmdon Hall in 1780. The medieval parish church, recorded as "weak and dilapidated", was rebuilt on its original site, effectively becoming the estate church for Elmdon Hall. The hall was demolished in 1956 and its grounds became a public park.

The building is constructed of ashlar limestone with slate roofs. Its plan consists of a three-bay nave, a west tower of three stages, and a shallow apsidal chancel. The church has been extensively altered, with a substantial new nave added to the south in 1979, which contains entrance, vestries and meeting rooms.

The short west tower has small louvred bell openings and an embattled parapet with crocketed pinnacles. The main faces of the diagonal buttresses carry recessed panels with trefoil ends. Above the arched west door is a small two-light window. A small vestry was added later to the north-west return between tower and nave. The north side of the nave features embattled parapets and three large windows with simple Y-tracery, served by a continuous string-course functioning as hood-mould. The east end has similar design, with a shallow three-sided apse and interlaced tracery. The 1979 addition is rendered with flat parapets and rectangular windows; it substantially dominates the original structure from the south and east.

Internally, the tower base forms a small lobby beneath a plaster rib-vault dated 1781, with an armorial shield at its centre. The nave roof displays shallow arched trusses crossing scissor-fashion at the ridge with pierced arcading filling the central lozenge; this is either original to 1781 or a 19th-century renewal. The 18th-century nave has white plastered walls and a four-centred arch leading to the sanctuary. Window openings and the chancel arch feature freestone dressings with Gothic detailing including attached shafts in the jambs, notably well-observed for the period. In the sanctuary, stone shafts continue upward between triple windows to form springers for a plaster rib-vault with pretty cusping; the vaulting bays carry shields with painted armorials.

The south wall of the nave was largely removed in 1979 to provide access to the new nave, with two plain square piers forming a triple opening in modern idiom. The responds at east and west are formed from 18th-century window jambs. The 1979 nave has pale brick walls with windows set high and a boarded ceiling; its higher floor level was intended to preserve original box pews, which proved rotten and were removed, replaced by modern chairs.

The sanctuary retains Gothic panelled wainscot with a carved frieze at sill level, probably of 1781, together with a reserved but pretty Gothic altar rail of the same period. An organ gallery at the west end of the nave rests on two slim shafted columns with a front of blind Gothic arcading. Nave seating and some wall panelling are in light oak, installed in 1979.

The church contains a notable collection of monuments. Mid-19th-century painted boards display the Commandments and Creed. Isaac Spooner (died 1816) is commemorated by a large Gothic monument signed by Seaborne of Birmingham, featuring an outer cusped arch framing a tablet within an ogee arch with paired sub-arches. To the left of the chancel arch stand Gothick monuments to Abraham Spooner (died 1788) and his wife Anne (died 1783), the builders of the church, both featuring Neoclassical urns on Gothic tabernacles. The north nave wall carries a Gothic tablet to Abraham Spooner Lillingston (died 1836), signed by Wilkes of Birmingham, and also by Wilkes, a tablet to Jane, Dowager Countess of Rosse (died 1837). Several additional minor tablets of similar quality are distributed throughout.

The east window is by Cox, Sons Buckley & Company of London, dated circa 1891-7. The clear-glazed north nave windows contain four Continental enamelled glass roundels from the old St Nicholas church: three depicting Faith, Hope and Charity, apparently 18th century, and a fourth showing the Last Supper dated 1532. These were collected here circa 1937-9.

The Gothic detail throughout is notably well-observed for 1781, reflecting Standbridge's reputation as an architect of skill, noted in Warwick by 1777.