St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick

St Nicholas Church stands beside the Thames in Chiswick, a short walk from the river’s edge. The present building dates from 1882–84, when most of the earlier structure was taken down and rebuilt in Perpendicular style with Kentish ragstone. Only the west tower, raised between 1416 and 1435, was kept. The nave is unusually wide and nearly square because the tower stands close to Church Street. Inside, the tall arch to the tower and the hood-mould above the west door survive from the 15th century. The church holds monuments to people who shaped national life. A tablet in the porch marks an early English foliated cross, while wall tablets remember Charlotte Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, and Sir Thomas Chaloner with his two wives. David Garrick wrote epitaphs for the painter William Hogarth and the actor Charles Holland. In the burial ground lie the graves of Frederick Hitch, who won the Victoria Cross at Rorke’s Drift, and the Italian patriot Ugo Foscolo, whose monument carries inscriptions added by the Italian government. Outside, the churchyard contains the tombs of artists and soldiers. Philip James de Loutherbourg’s mausoleum was designed by Sir John Soane, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s bronze tomb stands against the wall. Percy Harris’s Grade II* listed monument shows the resurrection of the dead in relief carving. The grave of bricklayer Richard Wright, who worked for Lord Burlington, recalls Chiswick’s past. A short stroll from the church brings visitors to the Thames towpath, where the river’s flow completes the scene.