Church Of St Giles With St Nicholas

CHURCH OF ST GILES WITH ST NICHOLAS

This is the medieval parish church of Sidmouth, a seaside resort whose expansion in the late 18th and 19th centuries drove a major rebuilding. The church retains its late medieval tower but was otherwise largely rebuilt in 1859-60 by William White, a leading Victorian Gothic Revival architect.

The building is constructed in local limestone with Bath stone dressings and slate roofs.

EXTERIOR

The late medieval west tower is the most significant survival from the original church. It is three stages high with set-back buttresses and a small polygonal stair-turret rising to the battlements. The ground floor contains a west doorway under a square frame. Above this is a large five-light west window with tracery probably by White, featuring side lights with panelled Perpendicular tracery and a large quatrefoil in the head. The second stage has a small two-light window on the west face, while the belfry stage contains two-light windows with pierced stonework infilling.

The very wide south aisle comprises four bays with a porch under a steeply pitched gable at the second bay from the west. Each of the other bays, divided by buttresses, has three-light windows with distinctively High Victorian tracery: a tall central light with side lights containing small sexfoils in their spandrels. The clerestory of the nave has two lights per bay, each with a trefoiled head. The north elevation of the nave and aisle is similarly treated. There are no parapets.

The south transept has an attenuated south window with a large sexfoiled circle in the head, matching the design used for the north transept's north window. South of the chancel are a pair of hipped roofs with two-light Geometrical windows beneath, sandwiched between the south transept and a further gabled projection to the east, also with a two-light Geometrical window. The east window of the chancel is of four lights with a large sexfoil motif in the head. Plain late 20th-century vestries stand across the east end.

INTERIOR

The walls are plastered and whitened. The nave and aisles are divided by four-bay arcades, with a further arched bay beyond these leading to the transepts. The piers are quatrefoil with dark marble shafts in the intermediate hollows. The main shafts carry mouldings, while the marble shafts feature highly original carved foliage capitals designed by local antiquary Peter Orlando Hutchinson. Above these, a shaft rises vertically to embed itself in the hollow chamfering of the arcade arches. Between each pair of clerestory windows is a detached marble shaft with foliage capital. The arches to the transepts and chancel are taller and wider than the nave and aisle arcade arches and also feature marble shafts.

Over the nave is a tall, steep five-sided roof with tie-beams, a crown-post to the collar, and diagonal boarding between the common rafters. The aisles have lean-to roofs with heavy cusping. In the chancel, two arches on either side lead to aisles. They feature black and dull brown marble shafts, ornately carved foliage capitals, and double-chamfered arches. The chancel roof is more plainly treated than the nave roof, with curved principal rafters and purlins dividing the ceiling into square panels.

FIXTURES AND FITTINGS

The reredos was designed by S S Teulon and depicts the Evangelists in elongated quatrefoils, with inventive geometric cresting above and large, bold gables over trefoiled arches at the sides. The stone is sadly covered in paint. The stone pulpit is polygonal with pierced sides. The font is octagonal with a traceried bowl and a tall, richly buttressed and pinnacled timber cover.

A 15th-century stained glass shield depicting the five wounds of Christ survives in the north chancel aisle. Mid-Victorian stained glass includes the east window by William Wailes (1860), who also executed the south aisle west window. The west window, by Hughes (1867), was given by Queen Victoria in memory of her father, the Duke of Kent, who died at Sidmouth in 1820. The south transept window commemorating Bacon (died 1859) is by Gibbs. Two south aisle commemorative windows to Gutteres (died 1864) and Pennant (died 1869) are by Ward and Hughes. Numerous monuments from the previous church have been re-sited, notably a draped urn to Mary Lisle (died 1791) in the south chancel aisle. Many minor wall tablets from the 18th and 19th centuries remain. The church has been considerably altered internally since the 19th century and underwent a major reordering and refurnishing scheme in 2009.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES

A tall First World War memorial cross stands to the west of the tower. In the southwest part of the churchyard is a memorial timber lychgate with a hipped roof, erected in memory of someone who died in 1926.

ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT

William White (1825-1900) was a leading architect of the Victorian Gothic Revival, born in Northamptonshire and great-nephew of the naturalist Gilbert White of Selborne. He trained under D G Squirhill in Leamington Spa and worked as an assistant in George Gilbert Scott's office from 1845 to 1847, before establishing independent practice in Truro. He developed a highly successful career as a church architect in the southwest and was a major exponent of High Victorian Gothic from the 1850s and 1860s, making extensive use of brick and polychrome. Though best known for churches, he also designed schools, parsonages, and country houses. He moved to London in 1852.