Church of St Nicolas

Church of St Nicolas

This is a church on Bury Street in Guildford, Grade II* listed. The building combines a 15th-century Loseley Chapel with a much larger church built between 1870 and 1875, designed by S.S. Teulon but executed by Ewan Christian. It was consecrated in April 1876. The tower lantern was designed by Stanley Gage Livock and added in 1951.

The Loseley Chapel has flint rubble walls laid in courses. The remainder of the church is built in Bargate stone blocks with aluminium roofs, except for a ribbed copper roof over the teak lantern. The plan is almost cruciform, with a square crossing tower, an apsidal chancel, an aisled nave with clerestory, and the Loseley Chapel forming the south transept arm. There are porches to the north and south.

The three-stage tower rises over the crossing vault, with a ringing chamber and bellchamber above. The lower stages have quoined angles and gabled offset pier buttresses. An octagonal stair turret at the south-east angle is topped by an octagonal lantern with stone parapet and lancet windows. The upper stage has a corbel table and two tall arched windows in ashlar surrounds on each face, with the openings filled with scalloped-ended louvres.

The canted apse to the east rises over a crypt, with offset buttresses and two-light and roundel plate-tracery windows. Smaller lancet windows light the crypt below. A rainwater head dated 1849 on the north wall of the apse dates from when Henry Woodyer worked on the previous church. The north transept gable end displays a large plate-tracery three-light and roundel window on a sill string course, under hood moulding, with a transomed leaded window below and a pointed-arched door to the side.

The pentice aisle to the north has four triple lancet windows alternating with buttresses, and paired roundel windows in the clerestory above. The north porch follows the line of the corner site, with double doors in a three-step roll-moulded surround under hood mould, flanked by jamb shafts. Five steps in front have swept railings on twisted spiral standards.

The west front has gabled buttresses flanking a very large window with two plate-tracery two-light and roundel windows below and a five-lobed roundel above under common hood moulding. A flat-roofed vestry in the south-west angle has paired lancet windows.

The south aisle, designed by Ewan Christian, has three gables at right angles to the nave, each with a three-light and roundel window under hood mould and alternating buttresses. The larger gable to the west has a south door below in a two-step roll-moulded surround and a roundel window above. A 20th-century flint rubble and stone church hall is attached to the Loseley Chapel at the south-east by a glass corridor.

Interior

The south aisle has a narthex in its western bay, separated from the remainder of the church by screens with wooden corbelled wall plates and an arched panelled roof. The five-bay nave arcades rest on round piers with moulded caps. The clerestory windows have Bath stone surrounds, with each embrasure divided by a detached column. A tall chancel arch on jamb-shafts leads to a rib-vaulted crossing and chancel apse. The crossing sanctuary has arcaded sides with double pillars repeated in the supports for the corbels of the arch leading to the apse. A marble floor and mosaics are in the apse.

A coloured and gilded piscina and two-seated sedilia in the apse are decorated with symbols of the Eucharist. A wrought iron screen designed by Woodyer and made at Millmead in Guildford fills three of the sanctuary side arches. Low marble walls separate the nave from the sanctuary, with a hanging rood above designed by Charles Nicholson. A marble and alabaster font by Thomas Earp, with a pillared base and carved panel reliefs depicting sermons, is positioned in the sanctuary.

A magnificent font stands in the west end of the nave under a tall carved canopy by Earp, designed by Woodyer. The large bowl sits on a central pillar flanked by smaller pillars at angles on moulded plinths with foliated caps. Each side of the font is carved in deep relief with baptism and Old Testament scenes, with figures emptying jars at the corners. A five-stage towering canopy above has a square main structure with cusped arches on pillars of four coupled shafts. At the corners are statues of the four evangelists, with crocketed gables above surmounted by carved pelicans and painted scenes. Quatrefoil recesses in the spandrels contain angles, and an octagonal base with lantern rises from the centre of this stage, topped with pinnacled flying buttresses and a smaller lantern above with crocketed spire crowning. The central wooden drum cover is drawn up by pulley and chain into the canopy and is carved with the twelve apostles. The west wall is painted and gilded with angels and scenes of baptism, communion, and the crucifixion. The font was completed in 1900 by Joseph Aloitius Pippett. The church contains stained glass by Clayton and Bell.

Memorials

The Loseley Chapel contains two important medieval tombs. A tomb to Arnold Brocas on the south wall has an effigy of a priest in a painted red cope. A five-bay altar tomb front is panelled with quatrefoils, each enclosing a shield. The recess over the tomb has panelled sides and a vaulted soffit of three bays divided by cinquefoil cusped arches, with angel and portrait corbels to the rear.

An alabaster tomb of Sir William More and his wife Dame Margaret on the east wall has effigies flanked by pilasters and marble panels. Brackets on the sides hold seated cherubs, with dark-coloured Corinthian columns either side of the centre and cornice with shields above. Wings have been added to either side for further family members, including Sir George More and his wife, of kneeler type.