St Nicholas Church

St Nicholas Church stands in the centre of Sutton, London, on a site used for worship since Saxon times. The present Gothic building, designed by Edwin Nash, was completed in 1864 with dressed flint and stone dressings. It replaced an earlier church that dated mostly from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries and had a tower, porch and chancel. The church is worth visiting for its long history and fine architectural details. It incorporates monuments from the old building, including memorials to Sarah Glover, Lady Dorothy Brownlow and William Earl Talbot. A medieval piscina survives from the earlier church, and the tower has a shingled broach spire. The church suffered only slight damage in a 1940 air raid, when a flying bomb destroyed some graves but left the building intact. Inside, the nave has pointed arches on circular columns with foliated capitals and a timber roof. The south porch bears the inscription ‘How amiable are thy dwellings thou Lord of Hosts’. The churchyard is small and wooded, with lawned areas, benches and two public footpaths running through it.