St Nicholas, Great Coates

St Nicolas (also St Nicholas) is a Grade I medieval parish church on Great Coates Road, on the western edge of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, in the Diocese of Lincoln. Historic England dates the nave to about 1200, with fourteenth-century aisles and chancel and a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century west tower.

Overview

The listing records a four-bay aisled nave, three-bay chancel and west tower. The oldest work is the nave of about 1200, extended in the thirteenth century: clustered quatrefoil piers carry round and slightly pointed arches of late Norman character. Aisles and chancel followed in the fourteenth century, with Curvilinear and reticulated tracery. The ironstone tower, with limestone dressings, has a Tudor-arched west door, a Perpendicular west window, an embattled parapet with crocketed finials and an 1806 clockface by Thwaites of Clerkenwell. Aisles are ironstone ashlar and rubble; the clerestory is brick; the chancel mixes ironstone, cobbles, flint and chalk, with a twentieth-century east section in rock-faced limestone. Roofs are slate.

James Fowler of Louth restored the church in 1865. Further work in 1929–32, including a new east window, was by W. and L. Bond. Interior fittings include a fourteenth-century ogee piscina in the south aisle, a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century octagonal font, fragments of medieval heraldic glass, and two notable Barnardiston brasses in the chancel (one of 1420 to Lady Isabella, another of about 1503 to Sir Thomas Barnardiston and family). A Domesday manor at Great Coates already included a church.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1379843
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St Nicolas