The Friends of St Nicholas Church

CHISWICK PARISH CHURCH

2007

ST NICHOLAS CHURCH

There has been a church beside the Thames at Chiswick for over a thousand years, and maybe since as far back as the 7^th century. It was a common practice to dedicate a church to St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, fishermen and travellers, where parishioners’ livelihoods depended on water. Chiswick was a fishing village where later farming, basket-making, brewing and ship-building developed.

The church that we know today incorporates the oldest surviving building in Chiswick, the tower dating from 1425. The rest of the building was completely renewed in the 1880s to a design by John Loughborough Pearson, and most of the expense was borne by a churchwarden of the time, Henry Smith of the local brewers, Fuller, Smith and Turner, still a thriving Chiswick business.

At St Nicholas there are many reminders of Chiswick’s history, from the tablet to William Bordall who built the tower, to the magnificent alabaster memorial to Sir Thomas Chaloner, church plate given by the Duke of Devonshire and the Fauconberg vault under the chancel containing the remains of the daughters of Oliver Cromwell and maybe also their father’s beheaded corpse. And then there are the church’s registers and records dating back to 1622, a priceless treasure still kept on site, not to mention the tomb of William Hogarth in the churchyard as well as the graves of other historical figures.

The history of St Nicholas Church encapsulates the life of Chiswick over the past millennium.  

CHISWICK IN YEARS PAST

 St Nicholas’ Registers and Vestry records reveal fascinating glimpses of life in Chiswick in earlier days when the Thames was the main highway to London. They date back to 1622.

It is said that Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers burned earlier records to keep themselves warm, a clue being the entry in 1656 stating ’Item, Pay’d Goody Blake 1/6 pence for cleaninge ye Church after ye soldiers’.

There are entries for fashionable weddings, for baptisms which describe parishioners’ livelihoods - ‘shipwright’, ‘soapboyler’, ‘working-jeweller’ - and for causes of death ‘drownings’, ‘endeavouring to go over ye Pales in ye Night’, ‘Killed by Boxing’, ‘Poor highwayman who fell under the wheels of the Exeter coach’.

Not least there are the meticulous accounts of the churchwardens wholly responsible for the upkeep of the church in years past. In 1622 they note payments ‘to the smyth for iorn (iron) works about the bells’, ‘to the Carpenter for stuffe for seats in the church’, ‘For mending the howre glasse in the church’, ‘For bringing by water the timber and boodes (boards) that mended the churchyard railes and made the beare (bier)’, ‘For vij (7) pound of lead for the steeple and for nayles’, ‘For a thousand of brickes’.

Today’s church accounts are not so different, but instead of receiving ‘Church duties’, levied on all parishioners, the Church Council looks to its Friends for help with maintaining our heritage.

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For more information  quoting reference FOSNIC