Church of St Nicholas

Details

TL 86 SE RUSHBROOKE

4/53 Church of St. Nicholas - 14.7.55 I

Parish church. C14 tower; the remainder mainly rebuilt during the C16. Nave, chancel, south aisle, south porch and west tower. Rubble flint with old render; freestone quoins; some Tudor brick, especially for window mullions and dressings; plaintiled roofs. Crow-stepping to gables of porch,and east ends of nave and chancel. A flat roof to the south aisle, with a row of gargoyle heads below the parapet. Tower in 3 stages, unbuttressed, with crenellated top and gargoyle waterheads; on west, a 2-light Decorated window to the first stage, and a single lancet to the second stage; cusped Y-tracery windows to each face of top stage. 3-light windows, with depressed heads and intersecting tracery, to the north side of nave and south side of aisle, the latter with cusping, and a similar blocked window on the east side of the aisle. 3-light windows with panel tracery to chancel. 4-centred arched doorway to porch with an empty niche above. South doorway with leaf and flower motifs in the spandrels and cavetto moulding to surround. This doorway leads into the end of the south aisle, which extends for the whole length of the nave and part of the chancel. It is divided inside into 3 sections with stone walls between: the central section was the family pew of the Jermyn family, and the eastern bay is their funeral chapel, containing various monuments of the C17 and early C18, including a black and white marble monument with reclining figure to Thomas Jermyn, d.1692, and another to Sir Robert Davers, d.1722, with a grey sarophagus surmounted by a broken pediment with garland. Fine steeply-pitched roof to nave in 5 bays with all components moulded: no tie-beams or collars, simply long arched braces which meet in a pendant boss below the apex. A deep cornice with lozenge decoration, and short wall-posts with the remains of shields as corbels. Shallow-pitched chancel roof in 4 bays, like a cambered ceiling: tie-beams with a formalised leaf-type motif, mouldings to trimmers and joists: ornate carving and brattishing to the cornice, and shields on the corbels. The nave and chancel windows contain fragments of medieval stained glass and there are 2 complete figures in the east window. The floor of the chancel is completely paved with late C17/early C18 black ledger slabs. Simple piscinae to chancel and south aisle. On the north wall of the chancel a brass to Thomas Badby, d.1583, a Bury St. Edmund's clothier. The seating in the nave was introduced in the 1840's at the instigation of Col. Rushbrook of Rushbrooke Hall, and is arranged against the north and south walls as in a college chapel, in Victorian Gothic style, incorporating some fragments of medieval woodwork. At the west end, an ornate organ with the pipes painted in designs in green and gold. A curious tiered timber font in the west end of the south aisle was also introduced by Col. Rushbrooke. A timber and plaster tympanum infilling the chancel arch, and resting on what is said to be the rood beam, bears the royal arms of Henry VIII with a dragon and greyhound as supporters, flanked by a portcullis and Tudor rose. These arms, claimed by Munro Cautley as unique, were not in the church in the early C19: they are not mentioned in Davy's church notes (c.1840), and Henry and Parker's 'Suffolk Churches'(1855) says they are of 'modern introduction'. Dr. Diarmaid MacCulloch suggests that, although of older workmanship, they were probably introduced here from another setting by Col. Rushbrooke. (See Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. Vol. XXXII Part 2, 1971, p.197).

Listing NGR: TL8934161520

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

284474

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, Vol. 32, (1971), 197

End of official list entry

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