Description

HARWICH

TM2632NW CHURCH STREET
609-1/2/32 (North East side)
25/09/51 Church of St Nicholas

GV II*

Church. Consecrated 1822, east end re-ordered 1897. By MG
Thompson. Perpendicular style.
MATERIALS: Gault brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings
and Coade stone pinnacles, cast-iron tracery and columns.
Slate roof.
PLAN: hall church with 5-bay nave and 2-storey aisles.
EXTERIOR: square west tower with west doors, flanked by
entrance bays containing the stairs to tower and galleries.
Canted east end with single-storey vestries to each side.
3-light Perpendicular-style windows throughout. 3-stage tower
with panelled polygonal buttresses surmounted by crocketed
pinnacles, embattled parapet and stone spire. Clock faces to
stone panels beneath bellstage openings. Panelled buttresses
and ashlar embattled parapets to entrance bays. Buttresses
with crocketed pinnacles and brick parapets to aisles. Upper
tier of aisle windows on sill string course, lower tier are
basket-arched.
INTERIOR: gallery staircases have ramped and wreathed
handrail, stick balusters and column newels. Quatrefoil piers
to nave arcade. Vault shafts rise to the groin vaulted ceiling
with foliate bosses. Flat ceilings to aisles with crossed
ribs. Galleries to both aisles and west end, frontal carved
with cusped arcading on foliate corbels. Upper tier of iron
galleries in Gothic style at west end known as 'cages'.
FITTINGS: box pews to nave and galleries, doors removed for
most part. Organ on west gallery by Flight and Robson. East
end raised on step 1897 with new stalls, contemporary pulpit.
Altar rail with iron cusped arches may predate this. Painted
Paternoster and Commandment boards in Gothic reredos.
MEMORIALS: fine marble wall tablet of 1666 to Sir William
Clarke on north side with paved composite columns, broken swan
neck pediment with bust and cartouche below. C18 marble wall
tablets to Mary Leach and Sarah Bridge. Large collection of
early C19 grey and black marble wall tablets, notably to Cox,
Hopkins and Bridge families.
Early C19 stained glass to east windows. Royal Arms of George
IV on west gallery. C13 Purbeck font on restored base.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Chapel of Ease to Church of All Saints
Dovercourt until 1871. Stands on site of chapel founded c1210
by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, which was said to have been
extremely dilapidated in 1819. The present structure cost
»20,000 raised by subscription and rate. The accounts for the
Coade pinnacles of 1821 survive.
(Kelly A: Mrs Coade's Stone: London: 1990-: 348; Whites
Directory: 1863-: 525-6; Kelly's Directory: 1886-: 166;
Kelly's Directory: 1899-: 209).

Listing NGR: TM2611632584

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533037

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)