St Nicholas, Pyrford

St Nicholas’ is a Grade I Norman parish church on Church Hill, Pyrford, Surrey, in the Diocese of Guildford and the parish of Wisley with Pyrford, overlooking the Wey valley.

Overview

Historic England records a twelfth-century church restored in 1869 by Sir T. G. Jackson, of mortar-covered puddingstone with ironstone and clunch dressings, a plain tiled roof and a wood-shingled west bell turret under a broach spire restored in 1967. The plan is nave, north and south porches and an eastern chancel. The north door is Norman, with zigzag carving to the arch and scalloped and leaf capitals. Round-arched Norman windows survive on the north side of the chancel and either side of a central medieval west buttress; the east window is fourteenth-century, the remainder Victorian. The north porch is timber-framed with brick infill.

Interior fittings include a geometrically panelled Jacobean pulpit with tester, inlaid and dated 1628. Wall paintings survive: on the south wall a Flagellation of Christ and a Psychomachia of about 1140; on the north nave wall a Pilgrim’s Way of about 1200, restored in 1970. Surrey HER notes consecration crosses and that fragments of an unusually early Norman fresco were uncovered in 1967 beneath a later painting of about 1200. The church is thought to have been built around 1140, before Newark Priory (1199).

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1044721
• Wisley with Pyrford