Church Of St Nicholas

Church of St Nicholas, Winterborne Kingston

This is a parish church of 14th-century origin with significant additions and restoration work from the 1870s onwards. The building comprises a nave of four bays with a north aisle and north vestry, a chancel, a west tower, and a south porch. The materials are banded flint and local Heathstone rubble with ashlar dressings and clay tiled roofs.

The west tower features diagonal two-stage buttresses and a moulded string course supporting an embattled parapet. The west window contains two trefoil-headed lights with a quatrefoil in a two-centred head. The belfry is lit by pointed windows with Y-tracery and reset head corbels above each opening. The south elevation displays a projecting porch with a 14th-century two-centred archway decorated with ovolo and hollow chamfered mouldings and chamfered stops. To the left of the porch are a pair of trefoiled lancets, and to the right are two 16th-century flat-headed, four-light windows. The south wall of the chancel contains a 14th-century window of two trefoil ogee-headed lights with a quatrefoil in a two-centred head, and a partly restored 14th-century doorway with chamfered jambs and a segmental-pointed head. The three-light pointed east window is 19th-century, with a two-light window in the east wall of the vestry to its right. The north return has two small square windows and a 19th-century three-light, cusp-headed window in the east end of the north aisle known as the Bond Window, which illustrates the lineage of Nathaniel Bond (1840–1910), owner of the Manor of Muston. The 19th-century work is fenestrated mainly with pairs and triplets of lancets.

The interior nave has a four-bay arcade with pointed arches. The easternmost arch with chamfered responds dates from the 14th century, whilst the remainder have clustered shafts with moulded capitals and bases and are late 19th-century work. The 19th-century pointed chancel arch is moulded with shaft responds, capitals and bases. The tower arch comprises three chamfered orders dying into the responds. The nave has a 19th-century arch-braced collared roof with a single wind-braced purlin, and the chancel has a 19th-century ribbed barrel roof.

The tower contains seven bells: three from 1600 by John Wallis inscribed "Feare God," "Prayse God," and "Love God"; one from 1749 by William Elery; and three of late 20th-century date. The church retains several high-quality fittings including a 14th-century trefoiled piscina with a round bowl, an early 17th-century octagonal oak pulpit with moulded panels and chip-carved frieze, and a stone font in baluster form with an ogee-moulded bowl dated 1736 on its pedestal and retaining its original cover with pineapple finial. Other features are largely 19th-century in date, including encaustic tiles and an early 19th-century marble monument.

The church stands towards the centre of Winterborne Kingston and is dedicated to Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia in the fourth century. The building originated in the 14th century and underwent major restoration by the architect George Edmund Street (1824–81) in the 1870s, when the vestry and north aisle were also added. The west tower was restored in 1999.