Newbury,
Berkshire - St Nicolas Church
16th century
Click photos to enlarge.
Notes in italics from Berkshire by Nikolaus Pevsner
(1966)
Yale University Press, New Haven and London. |
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From the street the churchyard
is entered by two very pretty Gothic archways. It is likely that they are
connected with a payment to Fuller White in 1770. |
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The church is the great
monument of the wealth of Newbury in the Late Middle Ages. It is a Perp
church throughout, large, ashlar-faced, and the work of one generation. It
was built c.1500-32, the nave at the expense of John Smallwood. The church
is embattled throughout. The W tower has massive polygonal buttresses and
big pinnacles with their own battlements and pinnacles. On it a date 1532.
The windows are of four to six lights and of three lights in the
clerestory. |
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Doorways in
tower, south porch and chancel. Battlement details. |
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The arcades have five bays,
and the piers are of a variety of the standard section of four shafts and
four hollows in which the shafts towards nave and aisle are trebled. Only one pier, the second from the E on the
N side, is different. It has a wave moulding instead of the plain hollow
and a capital band all round instead of capitals only for the shafts. The
nave roof is Perp and has the initials of John Smallwood. |
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The chancel arch and the
pretty chancel roof are of 1858 (Woodyer). |
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Pulpit. Unusual and quite
splendid. Above the familiar blank arches square panels with thick leaf
frames. The pulpit was presented in 1607. |
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Font. - Monument to Griffith
Cuerteys, died 1587. Kneeling figures under arches. - Charity boy
painted on board and cut out. He comes from a school founded before 1713. |
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The church
is in West Mills, Newbury
Map |
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More
Newbury |
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