Church Of St Nicholas

Church of St Nicholas

Parish church of 12th-century fabric with 15th and early 16th-century detail, restored in the 19th century. The building is constructed of flint rubble and indurated gravel conglomerate with limestone dressings, roofed with handmade red clay tiles. The tower is of red brick in English bond with a lead roof.

The chancel and nave form a single unit dating to the 12th century. The west tower is early 16th-century, while the south porch and north vestry are 19th-century additions. The chancel and nave have a moulded plinth. The east window is 15th-century, restored, consisting of three cinquefoiled lights with vertical tracery in a two-centred head. It features a moulded label, hollow-chamfered rear-arch and early wrought iron grill.

In the north wall is an early 16th-century archway of plastered brick, originally leading to a north chapel, now opening to the north vestry. The archway has a four-centred arch of two chamfered orders with semi-octagonal responds bearing moulded capitals and bases. The south wall contains two windows: the eastern is 15th-century, partly restored, of two cinquefoiled lights in a square head with an early wrought iron grill and sill forming a seat. The western window is 19th-century. Between them is a 15th-century doorway with moulded jambs, a two-centred arch in a square head with traceried spandrels and foliate bosses. Inside, above this doorway is a plastered groove marking the outline of an earlier two-centred window in the same position.

The chancel has no arch separating it from the nave. The chancel roof comprises two bays with a tiebeam bearing double-ogee mouldings. The south wallplate to the west of the tiebeam has 14th-century mouldings; to the east, 15th-century mouldings. The north wallplate is plain. The roof is seven-canted and plastered to the soffit.

The nave's north wall contains a 15th-century window of two cinquefoiled lights in a square head with moulded label and early wrought iron grill. East of this is a blocked early 16th-century doorway of plastered brick with jambs and a four-centred arch of two chamfered orders. At the west end is an early 16th-century north doorway of stone with moulded jambs, two-centred arch and label, accompanied by contemporary brickwork; it is now blocked and converted to a window. The south wall has two 19th-century windows and a late 14th or early 15th-century doorway between them, featuring a two-centred arch of two moulded orders and jambs with two recessed chamfers.

The nave roof is 14th-century, comprising two bays plus the base of a former bell-turret at the west end. A cambered central tiebeam supports an octagonal crownpost with moulded base and capital and four straight rising braces of square section. The eastern crownpost is plain with one similar axial brace. The roof is seven-canted and plastered to the soffit. At the west end, the crownpost structure is fully integrated with one portal frame of the contemporary bell-turret, which has a cambered tiebeam and straight square braces. The equivalent west portal frame has been altered to accommodate the tower-arch, mounted on a 19th-century high collar.

The early 16th-century west tower features diagonal buttresses to the northwest and southwest, straight buttresses to the two east corners, and a stair turret in the angle between the north side and the northeast buttress. The tower is of red brick with blue headers arranged in diaper patterns, divided into three stages with a moulded plinth and moulded strings at the floor of the bell-chamber and at the base of the parapet. The parapet is crenellated with reduced merlons. The tower-arch features plastered semi-octagonal responds with moulded capitals and bases and a four-centred arch of two chamfered orders.

The west window of the tower consists of three four-centred and transomed lights with tracery beneath a Tudor head. The jambs, mullions, head and square label are moulded; the transom is moulded and repaired with cement render. The second stage has a double-chamfered loop in the south wall and a window of two four-centred lights with tracery in the west wall, with chamfered jambs and mullions, a Tudor head and moulded label. The bell-chamber has windows in the south and west sides, each of three chamfered four-centred lights with tracery beneath a Tudor head with moulded label. The east window is similar but with a four-centred head, and the north window is similar but of two lights with a four-centred head. The stair-turret is lit by plain chamfered loops: two to the east, one to the north and three to the northwest. It has doorways with chamfered four-centred heads, and the brick stairs are supported by a chamfered four-centred arch at every quarter-turn. The tower contains two original floors with framed bellways and an original low-pitched roof with some 20th-century reinforcement.

The piscina has a plain head, oak shelf and quatrefoiled drain. The 14th-century font is of Purbeck marble, semi-octagonal and built against the south wall. It bears two shallow trefoil-headed panels on each of two faces, one face having a shield and two having rosettes, with a moulded underside. North of the tower-arch is an early 16th-century stoup with a four-centred head and plastered bowl. The floor of the south porch contains a plain tapering coffin-lid of Purbeck marble. Fragmentary paintings appear on the south and west walls north of the tower-arch, and mutilated double brick niches are visible on the north and south walls, dating to the early 16th-century.

The church contains three bells: the first is uninscribed but probably pre-Reformation; the second is by Thomas Gardiner of Sudbury, dated 1726; and the third is late 14th-century, inscribed 'Vox Edwardii sonet in Aure Dei'. The bell-cage is original or early, with transoms jointed with double tenons and trenched saltire bracing in all the vertical frames.

According to P. Morant's History and Antiquities of Essex (1768), the north chapel was in use in 1609, when an alabaster monument to Stephen Beckingham was installed in it.