Church Of St Nicholas

HARWICH

TM2632NW CHURCH STREET 609-1/2/32 (North East side) 25/09/51 Church of St Nicholas

GV II*

Church. Consecrated 1822, east end re-ordered 1897. By MG Thompson. Perpendicular style. MATERIALS: Gault brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings and Coade stone pinnacles, cast-iron tracery and columns. Slate roof. PLAN: hall church with 5-bay nave and 2-storey aisles. EXTERIOR: square west tower with west doors, flanked by entrance bays containing the stairs to tower and galleries. Canted east end with single-storey vestries to each side. 3-light Perpendicular-style windows throughout. 3-stage tower with panelled polygonal buttresses surmounted by crocketed pinnacles, embattled parapet and stone spire. Clock faces to stone panels beneath bellstage openings. Panelled buttresses and ashlar embattled parapets to entrance bays. Buttresses with crocketed pinnacles and brick parapets to aisles. Upper tier of aisle windows on sill string course, lower tier are basket-arched. INTERIOR: gallery staircases have ramped and wreathed handrail, stick balusters and column newels. Quatrefoil piers to nave arcade. Vault shafts rise to the groin vaulted ceiling with foliate bosses. Flat ceilings to aisles with crossed ribs. Galleries to both aisles and west end, frontal carved with cusped arcading on foliate corbels. Upper tier of iron galleries in Gothic style at west end known as 'cages'. FITTINGS: box pews to nave and galleries, doors removed for most part. Organ on west gallery by Flight and Robson. East end raised on step 1897 with new stalls, contemporary pulpit. Altar rail with iron cusped arches may predate this. Painted Paternoster and Commandment boards in Gothic reredos. MEMORIALS: fine marble wall tablet of 1666 to Sir William Clarke on north side with paved composite columns, broken swan neck pediment with bust and cartouche below. C18 marble wall tablets to Mary Leach and Sarah Bridge. Large collection of early C19 grey and black marble wall tablets, notably to Cox, Hopkins and Bridge families. Early C19 stained glass to east windows. Royal Arms of George IV on west gallery. C13 Purbeck font on restored base. HISTORICAL NOTE: Chapel of Ease to Church of All Saints Dovercourt until 1871. Stands on site of chapel founded c1210 by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, which was said to have been extremely dilapidated in 1819. The present structure cost »20,000 raised by subscription and rate. The accounts for the Coade pinnacles of 1821 survive. (Kelly A: Mrs Coade's Stone: London: 1990-: 348; Whites Directory: 1863-: 525-6; Kelly's Directory: 1886-: 166; Kelly's Directory: 1899-: 209).

Listing NGR: TM2611632584