Church Of St Nicholas

The Church of St Nicholas is a Grade I listed parish church located on Swaffham Road in Ashill. It features a mix of medieval and later architectural elements, constructed from flint with ashlar and some brick dressings, topped with slate and copper roofs. The church includes a west tower, a nave with a south aisle and porch, and a chancel with a vestry to the north.

The west tower, dating from the early 14th century, is supported by diagonal buttresses and features an ogee-headed west door with five orders of mouldings. Above the door is a three-light Decorated window with a reticulated motif of soufflet, dagger, and mouchettes. The tower also has three single-light cusped windows on the second floor and two-light cusped Y-traceried bell-openings, all topped by a crenellated parapet. The 15th-century two-storey porch has diagonal buttresses with an arrowhead section, a moulded entrance arch with a small cusped niche, and a three-light window above, along with two-light side windows. A 19th-century south doorway leads into the aisle, which contains five three-light panel-traceried windows, the three easternmost of which have highly elaborate carved transoms. There are also six two-light clearstorey windows featuring mouchettes, while the north wall has a blocked early 14th-century doorway and three large three-light Perpendicular windows.

The chancel includes one two-light cusped Y-traceried window, an early 14th-century two-light Y-traceried window with pointed trefoils, and a priest's door to the south. The east window has been renovated in a 14th-century style.

Inside, the church features a six-bay south arcade with an additional narrow bay to the east, supported by octagonal piers and arches of two plain-chamfered orders. The massive 14th-century tower arch has filletted semicircular responds supporting a wave-moulded arch of two and three orders. The chancel arch consists of two hollow-chamfered orders supported on polygonal responds. There is a simple arched piscina in the south aisle, while the chancel has an angle piscina with two trefoil arches and a colonnette. The chancel windows are adorned with scoinson arches on a pair of narrow shafts to the east. The east wall features 19th-century arcading with inset encaustic tiles, and there is a 19th-century chancel screen that incorporates fragments of a medieval screen.