Church Of St Nicholas

Church of St Nicholas

Parish church comprising a 14th-century tower with the remainder of the building mainly rebuilt during the 16th century. The structure consists of a nave, chancel, south aisle, south porch, and west tower.

The exterior is constructed of rubble flint with old render and freestone quoins, with some Tudor brick used particularly for window mullions and dressings. The roofs are plain-tiled. The porch and the east ends of the nave and chancel feature crow-stepping to their gables. The south aisle has a flat roof with a row of gargoyle heads below the parapet.

The tower rises in three stages and is unbuttressed, topped with crenellations and gargoyle waterheads. The west face contains a two-light Decorated window to the first stage and a single lancet to the second stage. The top stage has cusped Y-tracery windows on each face. The nave's north side and aisle's south side are lit by three-light windows with depressed heads and intersecting tracery; the aisle windows have cusping. A similar blocked window exists on the east side of the aisle. The chancel has three-light windows with panel tracery. A four-centred arched doorway opens to the porch with an empty niche above. The south doorway features leaf and flower motifs in the spandrels and cavetto moulding to the surround.

The south aisle extends the full length of the nave and part of the chancel, divided internally into three sections by stone walls. The central section was the family pew of the Jermyn family, and the eastern bay serves as their funeral chapel, containing various monuments from the 17th and early 18th centuries, including a black and white marble monument with a reclining figure to Thomas Jermyn (died 1692) and another to Sir Robert Davers (died 1722), featuring a grey sarcophagus surmounted by a broken pediment with garland.

The nave roof is steeply pitched across five bays with all components moulded. It contains no tie-beams or collars, instead employing long arched braces meeting at a pendant boss below the apex. A deep cornice with lozenge decoration runs below, with short wall-posts bearing the remains of shields as corbels. The chancel roof is shallow-pitched across four bays in the manner of a cambered ceiling, with tie-beams featuring a formalised leaf-type motif and mouldings to trimmers and joists. The cornice displays ornate carving and brattishing, with shields on the corbels.

The nave and chancel windows contain fragments of medieval stained glass, with two complete figures in the east window. The chancel floor is completely paved with late 17th and early 18th-century black ledger slabs. Simple piscinae are present in both the chancel and south aisle. A brass to Thomas Badby (died 1583), a Bury St Edmunds clothier, is mounted on the north wall of the chancel.

The seating in the nave was introduced in the 1840s at the instigation of Colonel Rushbrook of Rushbrooke Hall. It is arranged against the north and south walls as in a college chapel, executed in Victorian Gothic style and incorporating some fragments of medieval woodwork. At the west end stands an ornate organ with pipes painted in green and gold designs. A curious tiered timber font, also introduced by Colonel Rushbrook, is positioned at the west end of the south aisle.

A timber and plaster tympanum infilling the chancel arch, resting on what is said to be the rood beam, bears the royal arms of Henry VIII with a dragon and greyhound as supporters, flanked by a portcullis and Tudor rose. These arms, claimed by Munro Cautley as unique, were not in the church in the early 19th century: they are not mentioned in Davy's church notes (circa 1840), and Henry and Parker's 'Suffolk Churches' (1855) states they are of 'modern introduction'. Dr Diarmaid MacCulloch suggests that, although of older workmanship, they were probably introduced here from another setting by Colonel Rushbrook.