St Nicholas, Denston

St Nicholas is a Grade I parish church on Top Green in Denston, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

Overview

Historic England records a random flint church with stone dressings and solid stone buttresses, built on the site of a twelfth-century church. The west tower is late fourteenth century; the remainder is late fifteenth century. In 1475 Sir John Howard and Sir John Broughton obtained letters patent from Edward IV to found a perpetual chantry. The tower has diagonal buttresses and a castellated parapet. Nave, chancel (continuous, without a break) and aisles have castellated parapets and panel-traceried windows. An octagonal staircase tower on the north side led to the rood loft.

The south porch has a fan vault, an external canopied niche, and a castellated holy-water stoup. The fifteenth-century south door has traceried ornament in the upper panels. The interior has been little altered since the seventeenth century: a seven-bay chancel and nave with an original arch-braced cambered tie-beam roof and a cornice carved with lions, hounds, hares and harts. Stalls for chantry priests and benches for parishioners survive, with misericords and a font carved with the Seven Sacraments and the Crucifixion.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1031706
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St Nicholas