St Nicholas Church, Sutton, is a Grade II* listed parish church in the centre of Sutton, London. It was built between 1862 and 1864 in the Gothic style with dressed flint and stone dressings. It was designed by the architect

Edwin Nash Edwin Nash (1812 – 14 May 1884) was an English Victorian ecclesiastical architect active in mid-nineteenth-century Kent, England. Most of his commissions were churches. He worked with architect John Nash Round on St. John the Evangelist, ...

Location

St Nicholas - the oldest of the three town centre churches in Sutton - is surrounded by a small ancient graveyard, which is wooded. It also contains some lawned areas with benches. Two well used public footpaths run through these grounds. It is in ecumenical partnership with other denominations and in a Team Ministry with other Anglican churches.

History

The present building stands on a site that has been used as a church since Saxon times - an earlier, smaller church occupied the site until the nineteenth century, which apart from its

piscina A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, or else in the vestry or sacristy, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself. Anglicans usually refer to the basin, calling it a piscina. For Roman Ca ...

was replaced by the present church building, which was consecrated in February 1864. The previous church was stone, and dated mostly from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. It had a tower, porch and chancel. Its poor condition, as well as the enlargement of its congregation, necessitated its replacement. The church suffered slight damage in an air raid in 1940, during the

London Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

. A flying bomb fell near the church and mostly destroyed some of the graves in the churchyard, but the building itself remained largely intact.

Architectural features

Interior of St Nicholas Church - geograph

The church was rebuilt from an earlier one in 1862-4 by

, incorporating monuments from the old building. It is in the Gothic style. It was constructed with dressed flint and stone dressings. Its roof is of red tile. The entrance is bright blue. It has a four-bay nave, chancel, organ chamber and vestry, side aisles, south aisle chapel and west tower. Its tower has a doorway in its west side, four tiers of fenestration and a shingled broach spire. There are aisle windows of three lights with circular tracery over in pointed heads, two-light windows to the south aisle chapel and a chancel window of five lights. There are gabled porches to the north and south sides; the south porch has the following inscription on its bargeboard: "How amiable are thy dwellings thou Lord of Hosts". Inside the church are a nave with pointed arches supported on circular columns with foliated capitals; timber roofs; and whitewashed walls. The present structure incorporates a medieval piscina and monuments from the old church including the following: monuments to Sarah Glover 1628, to Lady Dorothy Brownlow 1699, to William Earl Talbot 1782 and to Isaac Littlebury 1740.

Burials

* Dorothy Mason, wife of

Sir William Brownlow, 4th Baronet Sir William Brownlow, 4th Baronet (5 November 1665 – 6 March 1701) of Belton House near Grantham in Lincolnshire, was an English Member of Parliament. Origins He was the younger son of Sir Richard Brownlow, 2nd Baronet (died 1668) of Humby ...

(d. 1700) *

William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot William Talbot, Earl Talbot, PC (16 May 1710 – 27 April 1782), known as the Lord Talbot from 1737 to 1761, was a British politician. Talbot was a notable figure among opposition Whig politicians during the reign of King George II before later ...

(1710–1782)

Notable clergy

Joseph Glover :''for the 1630s pioneer of the printing press in the New World see Jose Glover''. Joseph Glover is an American professor and currently serves as the Provost for the University of Florida. Glover attended Cornell University for his bachelor's deg ...

(d. 1638), who owned a printing business and whose wife, Elizabeth Glover, introduced the

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...

to North America, was

Rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

of St Nicholas from 1624 to 1636.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Nicholas Church Sutton London Sutton, London

Sutton Sutton (''south settlement'' or ''south town'' in Old English) may refer to: Places United Kingdom England In alphabetical order by county: * Sutton, Bedfordshire * Sutton, Berkshire, a location * Sutton-in-the-Isle, Ely, Cambridgeshire * ...

Grade II* listed churches in London Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Sutton Churches completed in 1864 Rebuilt churches in the United Kingdom 19th-century Church of England church buildings Churches bombed by the Luftwaffe in London