St Nicholas Church, Chiswick
| St Nicholas Church, Chiswick | |
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St Nicholas Church, Chiswick
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| 51°29′10″N 0°15′02″W / 51.4860°N 0.2506°WCoordinates: 51°29′10″N 0°15′02″W / 51.4860°N 0.2506°W | |
| Location | Church Street, Chiswick, London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Denomination | Church of England |
| Website | www |
| Architecture | |
| Status | Parish church |
| Functional status | Active |
| Administration | |
| Parish | St Nicholas with St Mary Magdalene, Chiswick |
| Deanery | Hounslow |
| Archdeaconry | Middlesex |
| Diocese | London |
| Clergy | |
| Vicar(s) | Simon Brandes |
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Listed Building – Grade II*
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| Designated | 11 July 1951 |
| Reference no. | 1189405 |
St Nicholas Church, Chiswick is a Grade II* listed Anglican church in Church Street, Chiswick, London, near the River Thames. The oldest part of Chiswick developed as a village around the church from c. 1181.
The current church dates from 1882–84, when most of the building except the tower was demolished and rebuilt at the expense of the brewer Henry Smith of the nearby Fuller, Smith and Turner brewery. Several monuments survive, mainly in the tower.
There has been a church on the Chiswick site since at least 1181 in Norman times. The church was formally visited and an inventory made at "the unusually early date of 1252":
Ornamenta inventa apud Chesewith die Sanctorum Johannis et Pauli Anno Domini Mo. CCo. Lo. secundo.
(Ornaments found at Chiswick on the day of Saints John and Paul, [26 June] 1252 A.D.)
This first inventory lists "a good and sufficient missal sent there from the treasury of St Paul's"; two graduals; a badly bound tropary; an old lectionary; an anthem book; a psalter but not the expected manual. Valuables included a small silver chalice; a red velvet chasuble; two vestments; three corporals; five altar cloths; an arras cloth; an old chrismatory; two brass and two tin candlesticks; and a font without a lock. The chancel roof needed repairing, and the church was at the time not dedicated. Visitations were repeated in 1297 and 1458.
The current church dates from 1882–84, when it was rebuilt to a design by the architect John Loughborough Pearson, except for the west tower which was built for William Bordall (vicar 1416–1435). Because of the small distance between the tower and the road at Church Street, Pearson made the nave short but wide, so it is nearly square in plan. The Duke of Devonshire gave £1,000 for the rebuilding, but most of the cost was paid for by Henry Smith of the nearby Lamb Brewery company, Fuller, Smith & Turner. The church is built of courses of squared Kentish ragstone masonry in the Perpendicular style. It has a stone coping with a copper roof.
Inside the church, surviving 15th-century features include the tall archway to the west tower and the hoodmould over the window above the west door.
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