Church of St. Nicholas is a Grade II listed building in the West Berkshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 14 April 1967. Church.
Church of St. Nicholas
- WRENN ID
- heavy-cobble-ebony
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- West Berkshire
- Constituency
- Reading West and Mid Berkshire MP: Olivia Bailey (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 14 April 1967
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of St. Nicholas, Nunhide Lane, Sulham
- OS grid reference
- SU 645 742
- Coordinates
- 51.46332, -1.07282
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St. Nicholas is a church built in 1838, with an apse and vestry added in 1875. It is designed in the lancet style and constructed from flint with Bath stone dressings. The building features stone-coped, parapeted gable ends and corbelled eaves under slate roofs. The church includes a west tower, nave, chancel, polygonal apse, north porch, and south vestry.
The tower has three stages with angle buttresses, a parapet, and square corner pinnacles. Each face of the bell stage has paired louvred lancets topped with quatrefoils in timber tympana. The second stage features a large lancet on the west side with a hood mould, carved stops, and a blank circular panel above it, while smaller lancets on the north and south sides also have hood moulds and carved stops. The south door is boarded.
The nave consists of three bays with lancets that have hood moulds and carved stops. At the west end, two lancets with hood moulds and carved stops flank the tower. The gabled north porch in the western bay has angle buttresses, a cornice, and a coped parapet, with three steps leading up to a boarded door flanked by low walls.
The chancel has two bays with lancets featuring hood moulds and carved stops. The three-sided polygonal apse has triple stepped lancets on the east side with hood moulds and carved stops, as well as lancets on the flanking sides.
The vestry is gabled and displays the date in a quatrefoil panel. It has a two-light window with quatrefoil plate tracery and a returned hood mould, along with a lean-to on the left that contains a Caernarvon arched boarded door. There is also a boarded door at the east end with a decorative gabled timber porch.
Inside, the nave features a three-bay hammerbeam roof with double purlins and arch bracing. There is a tower arch to the west and a three-arch Early English style stone chancel screen. The chancel has a two-bay arched braced roof and a vaulted apse, with an aumbry to the north and a piscina to the south. A large arch for the organ is located to the south, flanked by two vestry doors. Notable fittings include a bowl font from 1733 on a 19th-century shaft, a 19th-century pulpit, 19th-century wrought iron communion rails, and a 19th-century reredos. The nave has wall paintings, while the chancel and apse feature ceiling paintings. There are various monuments by Wilder and a model of the church as it was originally built in the vestry. The tower was removed in 1959.
Local climate
Church of St. Nicholas sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 730 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 79% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 71% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 55% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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