Church of St Nicholas

Church of St Nicholas

This is a Grade I listed church built of red sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. The building has a cruciform plan with an aisled nave, transepts, a crossing-tower, chancel, south chapel, and north porch.

The nave is rectangular with north and south aisles enclosed beneath a single roof with double slope. The north wall features a central gabled porch with corner buttresses with offsets and an arch-braced collar-truss roof. To the right of the porch is a flat-headed two-light trefoil window, and to the left a single-light window with cinquefoil head. The inner doorway has a moulded pointed arch with a hood mould bearing figural label-stops. On the north side of the nave roof is a large gabled dormer next to the crossing, containing a two-light pointed arched window with Y-tracery. The north transept has a three-light pointed arched window, and its east wall displays a 19th-century five-light window with three trefoils.

The chancel and south chapel windows are all from the 19th-century restoration. The north chancel wall has seven lancets, the south chancel seven smaller lancets, and the east end has a three-light pointed arched window with dripmould and geometrical tracery. Attached to the south of the chancel is the Eleanor Chapel, which has a smaller three-light east window and trefoil tracery. The Eleanor Chapel's south wall features a blind rectangular panel to the upper wall, a double lancet, a circular window with inset quatrefoil, another double lancet, and a pair of pointed arched doorways with common dripmould. The south transept contains a tall triple lancet and a single lancet. The nave's south wall has two smaller 19th-century triple-lancet windows. The west window is pointed-arched with reticulated tracery; the ground-floor entrance doorway has a four-centred arch with dripmould and studded double doors. Buttresses reinforce the walls at the junction with the aisles, and small lancet windows pierce the west walls of both aisles.

The octagonal 15th-century tower is broached at its base. Each face of the belfry has a louvred pointed arched opening with a two-light trefoil and traceried quatrefoil. The tower has a plain coped parapet with rainwater spouts projecting at each corner, a tall stone spire with small upper lucarnes capped by gablets, and an ornamental weathervane.

The interior presents a striking contrast between the unrestored nave, with stripped walls and roughly paved floor, and the 19th-century reconstructed chancel and transepts, which are completely separated from the nave by Seddon's glazed screen of 1888. The nave comprises five bays with early 13th-century arcades featuring pointed double-chamfered arches and rounded piers with moulded caps and bases incorporating waterholding moulding. The roof is a crown-post rafter type, with axial struts supporting a crown plate that retains traces of painted decoration on its soffit. At the junction of the nave aisles with the north and south transepts, large blind arches appear in the walls—a great semi-circular arch to the northwest and a large pointed arch to the southwest—suggesting that the aisles were once wider or originally intended to be wider.

Seddon's great glazed wooden screen encloses the west arch of the crossing, set with small geometric panes of plain glass. The upper screen encloses the head of the crossing arch above impost level and features pointed arched panels with multifoil heads. Below is a boarded rood canopy supported by compound curved consoles. The lower stage is formed by eight glazed panels with cinquefoil heads, with the centre panels forming glazed double doors. Although Seddon underpinned the crossing arches and replaced the crocket capitals, many of the stone voussoirs appear older and are likely 13th-century. The north wall of the transept contains a 13th-century piscina with dog-tooth moulded basin, which Seddon moved from Eleanor Chapel, and the southeast wall displays a broad Tudor-arched recess.

The chancel is almost entirely a 19th-century reconstruction by Seddon. Few features from the 13th-century church survive: the attenuated detached shafts of the lancets are probably 13th-century; the south chancel wall retains a fine 13th-century double piscina with dog-tooth moulding in a cinquefoil niche; and the pointed arched dripmould above the door to Eleanor Chapel is probably 13th-century. The overall character is decidedly 19th-century. Seddon raised the altar and replaced the stone flagged floor with 19th-century encaustic tiles. To the left and right of the altar are an aumbry and sedilia with shouldered arches, both 19th-century, as is the boarded wagon roof. A 19th-century Italianate-style pulpit is polygonal with a shallow arcade of open trefoils carried on short marble shafts and with a marble rail.

The font is probably early 12th-century: an octagonal bowl with roundels on each face, a single band of cable moulding, and a drum pedestal. The east window, dating from 1879, depicts the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the style of Heaton, Butler & Bayne. An organ of 1845 by Joseph Walker of London is a finger-barrel instrument. Seddon's screen of 1888 was designed by Robert Clark of Hereford.

Furnishings include a large plank chest in the southeast nave (known as the Grosmont Hutch) with a top lid divided by strap hinges.

Monuments are scattered throughout the church. The south chancel houses a slate monument to Joseph Austin (died 1816) with a white marble panel in relief surmounted by a sarcophagus. The south transept contains a rectangular tomb slab with marginal inscription and effigies of Charles William of Goytre (Mayor of Grosmont and Deputy Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster) and his wife Joan Baker, dated 1636. The southeast nave displays a large, possibly 13th-century, tomb slab with the crudely carved effigy of a recumbent knight, a shield at his side, and hands closed in prayer. The nave south aisle contains tablets to John James of Kingsfield (died 1814), with an oval slate tablet and white marble urn in relief, and to Amey James (died 1771), a rectangular stone tablet with broken pediment, curved apron, and angel head and wings. Wall tablets in the nave north aisle commemorate Susannah Watkins (died 1761), Beatrix Prichard (died 1752), Elizabeth Gilbert (died 1772), and Judith Pomphrey Austin (died 1795); one is a square tablet with fluted pilasters on each side supporting roundels at the angles. The nave floor incorporates numerous stone memorial slabs, mostly from the 19th century.