Church of St Nicholas

Church of St Nicholas, Wells-next-the-Sea

The Church of St Nicholas is a large Perpendicular parish church that originated in the late medieval period but was severely damaged by fire in 1879 and almost wholly rebuilt to the designs of Herbert Green, the diocesan architect. The church reopened in 1883, with the south porch, organ and seating completed in 1887. A north-west vestry was added in 1966.

The church is constructed of Quaternary and Quarry flint with Lincolnshire Limestone and Bath stone dressings, beneath lead and slate roofs. The plan comprises a chancel with north and south chapels, a nave with north and south aisles, a north rood stair turret, north-west vestry, south porch, and west tower.

Externally, the building is presented wholly in Perpendicular style, with some evidence of its pre-fire form surviving. The tall west tower, largely of the 15th century, features offset buttresses and an embattled parapet with blind panelled tracery. The west doorway retains rows of stylised flowers, mostly original. The clerestoried nave, aisles and chancel have no parapets. An enormous east window dominates the chancel. All windows are in 15th-century style with vertical tracery in a range of patterns. The chancel windows have external jamb shafts with bases apparently of the 15th century, though the shafts are wholly renewed. A fine south porch, executed in 15th-century style, features an embattled parapet similar to that on the tower. The north rood stair turret is also embattled. Changes in the masonry on the north side are probably the result of post-fire rebuilding and suggest that the lower parts of the walls survived largely intact. The low north-west vestry of 1966 is a modern addition.

The interior is wholly Perpendicular in style but was almost entirely rebuilt in the 19th century. The nave arcades have arches of two orders with many fine mouldings, carried on piers with four attached shafts featuring polygonal moulded capitals and high moulded bases. Hood moulds with large carved angels holding shields terminate above each pier, forming the continuation of shafts descending from the roof. The chancel arch is similar in design, and the tower arch has an inner order matching the nave arcades and a continuous outer order. The single arches to the chancel chapels are simpler. The chancel windows have shafted rere-arches with bases apparently of the 15th century.

The principal fixtures and fittings largely date from the 19th-century restoration, as few survived the fire. A small brass plate above the north chancel door commemorates Thomas Bradley, rector from 1446 to 1499. A fine late 15th- or early 16th-century door in the chancel survives, with the door itself original and the surround featuring a vine scroll, possibly also original; it appears fire-damaged and very red. A very fine and large 16th-century brass eagle lectern remains. A chest dated 1637 also survives. A Perpendicular-style font, octagonal with quatrefoils on the bowl and nodding ogees on the stem, was presumably refashioned during the restoration. The nave benches have carved shaped ends and good poppy heads in a range of patterns. Nineteenth-century encaustic tiles with geometric patterns were laid in the chancel.

The roofs are very good examples of 19th-century work in Perpendicular style. The chancel roof is arch-braced with carved angels on the posts at the junctions with purlins and the ridge, and on the wall plates. The wall plates and purlins are embattled, and there is open tracery in the spandrel between the braces and the ridge. The nave roof is similar, with alternate trusses descending on shafts between the clerestory windows. The south aisle roof is lean-to with moulded principals and open arched braces with short posts on stone corbels. The north aisle roof is also lean-to, but has short curved braces with carved spandrels on moulded corbels, and additional braces forming four-centred arches against the walls.

Good tomb slabs survive in the churchyard, some with seafaring motifs including ships, others with cherubs and other carved motifs.

Wells-next-the-Sea is mentioned several times in the Domesday Book of 1086, by which time it was clearly already a substantial place. The church was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, though this does not indicate the absence of a church at that date. In 1202 Ramsey Abbey obtained a charter allowing it to expand the port. The church stands a little way outside the early 13th-century planned town by the harbour and was certainly already well established by the early 13th century, though no surviving early fabric remains. The west tower dates to the 15th century, and other surviving fragments—including the fine late 15th- or early 16th-century door preserved inside and loose pieces of moulded stone—suggest that the late medieval church was substantial and well detailed. Following the devastating fire of 1879, the building was almost wholly rebuilt by Herbert Green. The extent to which Green's post-fire restoration replicated the original is unclear, but loose fragments in the church, which display more complex detailing than Green's work, suggest that he considerably simplified the architecture in many places. The restoration cost £7,000, with an additional £2,000 spent in 1883 on the organ, the pews and completion of the south porch. The north-west vestry was added in 1966.