Roman Catholic Church of St Nicholas and boundary wall

Roman Catholic Church of St Nicholas and Boundary Wall

A Roman Catholic church built in 1869-70, designed by the architect Gilbert Blount. It was constructed as the chapel for a Catholic Industrial School. The church is reverse-orientated with its entrance facing east, creating a convenient connection to the adjoining Manor House. This description follows conventional liturgical orientation, treating the altar as if it were positioned to the east.

The building is constructed from London stock brick with black brick banding and decorative detail, finished with Bath stone dressings. The roofs are covered in Welsh slate.

The church consists of a single volume chapel with an aisleless nave and an apsidal chapel positioned above a ground floor hall. A west porch, reached by steps with accommodation below, and a two-storey adjunct on the south side containing sacristies and other rooms complete the plan.

In the Gothic style, the church presents a picturesque appearance from the street, especially when viewed alongside the Manor House at ground floor level on the western part of the south side. The combination of church, southern extension, high boundary wall, gate piers and entrance doorway with Gothic stone surround creates a unified composition. The west porch is accessed via steps with modern railings, which lead to a raised platform built over vaults. The porch entrance features a stone hoodmould and corbels carved with the likenesses of Cardinal Manning and Archbishop (Cardinal) Manning. Above the pointed entrance is a trefoil-headed canopied niche containing a figure of St Nicholas. The steep west gable rises above, pierced by a large rose window with plate tracery.

The north side displays three pairs of two-light stone mullion and transom windows with pointed segmental brick arches at ground floor hall level, and single lancet windows above serving the chapel. The western gallery bay is distinguished by a circular octofoil window with diaper brick patterning below. All chapel windows have stone hoodmoulds with naturalistically carved label stops. The apse contains shorter paired lancets, with inset brick crosses positioned below. In the central bay, instead of a window, is a richly carved niche (empty of sculpture) featuring a projecting corbel, stubby column, canopy and tall finial. The projecting sacristy building on the south side has three-light mullion and transom windows on the ground floor and three-light mullioned windows on the upper storey.

The ground floor hall interior is functional in character, fitted with thin iron columns supporting the principal ceiling beams. To the south, below the sacristy, lies a kitchen. To the west, beneath the raised platform at the porch, are WC facilities covered by barrel vaulting. The west entrance porch contains two holy water stoups and carved portrait corbels positioned over the entrance to the main church body.

The church interior consists of four bays leading to a canted apse. The walls are plastered and painted. The nave has an open timber roof with collars and curved braces to the principal trusses. In the apse, the roof is boarded with ribs brought down onto the columns of a wall-arcade, supported on massive triple corbels carved with figures of angels and seraphim. The sanctuary side walls contain an aumbry, a piscina, and an opening to the priest's sacristy, each element beneath a hoodmould with carved stops.

At the west end, an organ gallery is mounted on thin iron columns with a delicate iron balustrade, reached by a spiral metal stair. Below the gallery, in the south-west corner, is a small chapel alongside the entrance porch, originally serving as the baptistery and latterly as the Lady Chapel, fitted with a modern stained glass window depicting the Virgin and Child. The hoodmould over the door from this chapel to the main church body has corbels carved with likenesses of Archbishop Wiseman and Monsignor Searle. Similar portrait corbels appear over the door to the sacristies. The sacristies contain plain Gothic fireplaces with chamfered surrounds and six-panel doors with chamfered panels. The priest's sacristy has an open timber roof and a door with blind trefoil panels opening into the sanctuary. An original winding timber stair with an octagonal newel and chamfered balusters descends from the boys' sacristy to the kitchen.

Original furnishings survive, including unfixed benches in the nave and west gallery with open backs and chamfered shouldered ends, and the original organ in the gallery, made by Alfred Monk and restored in 1968. Early or original fitted cupboards remain in the priest's sacristy. The sanctuary walls were originally richly stencilled to complement an elaborate altar and reredos, with altar rails matching the gallery rails. Wartime damage necessitated removal or repainting of this decoration and all original sanctuary furnishings. A modern forward altar on a timber dais has replaced the original arrangement. Against the east wall stands a canted central polished marble reredos panel and plinth, a mid-20th-century installation for the tabernacle (now removed). Most windows are clear glazed; the eastern windows carry applied transparencies.