Church of St Nicholas is a Grade II listed building in the Dorset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 16 August 1960. Church.

Church of St Nicholas

WRENN ID
stony-step-finch
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Dorset
Constituency
North Dorset MP: Simon Hoare (Con)
Country
England
Date first listed
16 August 1960
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Nicholas, High Street, Ashmore
OS grid reference
ST 911 177
Coordinates
50.95934, -2.12763
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of St Nicholas is a parish church built in 1874 by Charles Edwards of Exeter. It features a distinctive chequerwork of greensand and flint, with a gable-ended tiled roof that has stone copings. The west bellcote is made of ashlar stone. The church is designed in the 'Decorated' style and includes a nave, chancel, north aisle, north vestry and organ chamber, and a south porch.

Architectural details include major windows with large, square, projecting impost blocks. The nave has 2-light windows beneath 2-centred heads with labels, while the chancel features lancets with labels and a 3-light east window. The vestry and aisle have paired lancets. The west wall contains 2 lancets with a round window above that features 4 quatrefoils, along with a slit cross. The gabled porch has a moulded 2-centred arch with a label, and the south chancel door has a trefoiled head.

Inside, there is a 2-centred chancel arch made of 2 chamfered orders with a flat soffit. The arch leading from the aisle to the vestry is also 2-centred with flat responds, possibly a former chancel arch. The arch from the chancel to the organ chamber has flat jambs with corner shafts. The nave roof features an arch-braced collar truss with king-posts and struts, with alternate principals springing from corbels. The chancel roof is similar but has 2 levels of cusped windbraces to the purlins. The corbels are carved in relief by John Skeaping from the 20th century.

Additional interior features include an ogee-headed piscina, an octagonal pulpit with panelled tracery, an 18th-century font with a cauldron-shaped bowl on a baluster-shaped stem (the bowl may date back to the 12th century), and a 19th-century square font with crosses in sunken relief on an octagonal pier with marble corner shafts. There is also 19th-century glass, along with 18th and 19th-century wall monuments that have been reset, and a 20th-century painted reredos by W H R Blacking. Most other fittings are from the 19th century.

Local climate

Church of St Nicholas receives an average of 820 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 51% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 57% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 56% 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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