St Nicholas Church is an ancient Anglo-Saxon Church of England parish church in Leicester, England. One of the five surviving medieval churches of Leicester Old Town, it was constructed over 1150 years ago and is Leicester's oldest and longest continually used building. It is also among Leicester's oldest sites of Christian worship.
The building is located on the western edge of Leicester City Centre between Holy Bones to the north, Vaughan Way and Jubilee Square to the east, St Nicholas Circle to the south, and the ruined Jewry Wall, Roman bath complex, and Jewry Wall Museum to the north. It was built perhaps as the minster for the Anglo-Saxon Bishops of Leicester (9th century), added to following the Danish invasion (10th century), the Norman Conquest (11th century), during the High Middle Ages (12th century), and completed in the Victorian period (19th century). It is a Grade I listed building.
Today, St Nicholas attracts an active and predominantly young congregation. It is the official church of the University of Leicester. It is also the city's evening congregation, with the principle Sunday mass held at 6.30pm. The parish community is in the Broad Church, modern Anglo Catholic, and Progressive movements of the Church of England. It is a prominent member of the Inclusive Church Network.
History
The site in Roman times
Located adjacent to the Jewry Wall, the church sits in the centre of the ancient Roman city of Ratae Corieltauvorum. Numerous ideas about the use of the site in Roman times have been circulated, the most popular being that it was a temple of the god Janus. This idea arose from the discovery of many historical animal bones scattered around the site which were assumed to be evidence of ancient sacrifice. These also gave rise to the name of the adjacent street name, Holy Bones, and the subsequent nickname for the church. Other antiquarians speculated that the site was a Basilica or the Decumanus Maximus (principal street running east to west). The Decumanus theory arose from the mistaken hypothesis that the Jewry Wall was the surviving west gate of the city.
Present archeology suggests the site was most likely a courtyard between two gymnasia and that the Jewry Wall was the entrance into the adjacent bath complex which today lies exposed by archeologists to the west of the churchyard. Ratae's forum lay immediately to the east of the church and vestiges of masonry from its colonnade still litter St Nicholas' churchyard today. The abundance of readily available second hand building materials, the prestige of the sites Romanitas, and the central location in the settlement were probably the reason it was selected by the Anglo-Saxons for constructing a church.
Anglo-Saxon minster
Leicester gradually converted to Christianity after St Cedd's mission to the Middle Angles of 653 AD and St Chad’s missions to the Mercians of 669 AD. At first the borough was administered from Lichfield by St Chad, however, by 679 Leicester had its own bishop, Cuthwine. St Nicholas was almost certainly the site of the cathedral or minster of the ancient bishops and the north wall of the nave was probably constructed under the auspices of one of Cuthwine's successors, perhaps incorporating the Jewry Wall as its west front. St Margaret's, located in a Roman cemetery outside the north east corner of the city walls, also has Anglo-Saxon foundations and has been suggested as a candidate for the early cathedral because of its status as mother church of the city, its prebendary, and its long-standing status as one of the Diocese of Lincoln’s principal churches. With only tradition to go on, it is impossible to finally determine which of the two is actually the senior site.
The structure was rebuilt at least once during its early life. The date of the current double bayed nave is disputed. Both the official listing and the parish guidebook cautiously date it to 879 AD when the Danish invaders record the presence of a minster. The Victoria County History authors are more bold and suggest a dating any time between the 740s and 879 is not unreasonable. Whatever its date, the structure likely had a semicircular apse on the site of what is now the tower.
During the Danelaw
In 879 AD, Leicester was overwhelmed by Danish invaders and became part of the Danelaw. At this point Ceobred, last of the ancient Bishops of Leicester, fled his seat. His bishopric was passed on and soon reestablished his far away in the south in Dorchester where it remained until the Norman Conquest before being returned to the Midlands and installed at Lincoln (see Bishop of Lincoln). As mentioned, this is the first time the existence of a minster at Leicester appears in surviving records as the Anglo-Saxon chronicles merely record the names of the bishops without mentioning their church.
In the 10th century (900s AD), the single nave basilica was added to by the construction of the lower sections of the surviving tower and two transept chapels. The basilical structure thus took on the form of a cross with the altar probably sitting in a reconstructed apse behind the eastern arch of the tower on the site of the present chancel. These developments probably followed the 918 reconquest of Leicester by Anglo-Saxon forces under Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Edward the Elder, both children of Alfred the Great. They were responsible for the reconstruction of the town's walls, and the first church on the site of St Mary de Castro.
It is probable that either the nave or churchyard, or both depending on weather, were the meeting place of the Jurats of the Moot of Burgesses, the central committee of the government of the ancient borough of Leicester. It is these meetings of the Jurats that gave the adjacent Jewry Wall its name. This is recorded after the conquest from documents in the 12th century but may well have predated 1066.
Medieval parish church
After the Norman Conquest the church became a parish in the Diocese of Lincoln. At the time of Domesday Book the advowson of St Nicholas was in the possession of either the Bishop of Lincoln or the Lord of Leicester, Hugh de Grandmesnil. Although a tiny parish (less than 16 acres in size), in the early medieval times it was at the heart of commercial activity in Leicester sitting on the road leading to the West Gate, West Bridge, and the river port in the central shopping district.
During the 11th century the tower was completed to its present height and a (lost) spire was constructed. The westernmost two bays of the south aisle and the south and now blocked western doorways also date to this phase of construction.
In 1107 the parish was granted to the Canons of the College of St Mary de Castro and passed to Leicester Abbey on its foundation in 1143 remaining in its possession until the Abbey was suppressed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
In c. 1220 the dedication was changed to St Nicholas. The early dedication of the church is not certain, however a chronicle of Leicester Abbey mentions a church near the Forum dedicated to St Augustine and St Columba lost by the time of writing. However the chronicler is seemingly unaware of the dedication change at St Nicholas so it is reasonable to suppose both that St Nicholas Church was meant and that the dedication was original to the time of the Anglo-Saxon minster. The new dedication, Nicholas of Smyrna, the patron of sailors, merchants, and pawn brokers, was likely chosen because of the proximity of the Soar river port just west of the church and the parish's vibrant commercial life.
In the 13th century the church underwent expansion, creating most of the floor plan of the building we see today. The old apsidal east end was demolished and replaced with a new chancel stretching to the east of the tower. The south aisle was significantly widened to create a prominent Lady chapel. To the north of the new chancel and sanctuary, east of the north transept, a chantry chapel was also constructed. After the reform of the chantries this chapel was demolished and has never been reconstructed leaving remnants of the piscina of exposed on the external north wall of the chancel. It is probable that this round of restoration was paid for by one wealthy benefactor, probably the key beneficiary of the chantry prayers, as the parish had become quite poor by the High Middle Ages.
In the late 15th century the nave roof was elevated to its present height and the clerestories put in. The south porch also dates to this period.
As in all of Leicester and England's parishes, life at St Nicholas was heavily impacted by the English Reformation following First Act of Supremacy in 1534 when Henry VIII was declared Supreme Head of the Church of England. For St Nicholas the first consequences of this process were felt in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries when the nearby monastic houses of Austinfriars, Blackfriars, Greyfriars and the parish's patron, Leicester Abbey, were forcibly suppressed. At this point the parish advowson passed to the Crown which continued to present vicars to the parish until 1867.^ In addition to this ransacking of institutions the Henrician reformation also brought the first authorised English Bible to St Nicholas.
After the young Edward VI succeeded his father to the throne, the Protestant nature of the reform intensified under the guidance of Thomas Cranmer and others. The Bishop of Lincoln was replaced by the reformer Henry Holbeach, services of the church ceased to be celebrated according to the old Latin Sarum Rite when the First Book of Common Prayer and Book of Homilies were adopted by order of the First Act of Uniformity. Later in 1552 a second prayer book was promulgated and the parishes of Leicester lost most of their wall paintings, statues, and rood screens as part of a wave of enforced iconoclasm following the Second Act of Uniformity. The Chantry Acts of 1545 and 1547 meant the end of the chapel in the north aisle which collapsed in the following century and has never been replaced. St Mary de Castro also lost its chantry function at this time and the College of the Annunciation in the Newarke was dissolved.
The Edwardian reforms and those of Henry VIII were overturned by the accession of Mary I to the throne when the ancient liturgical forms were restored by First Statute of Repeal and full communion with the Papacy was restored to the Church of England by the See of Rome Act. The Catholic Restoration did not outlive Mary I and the reforms of Henry and Edward were reinstated by the Third Act of Uniformity and the Second Act of Supremacy under Elizabeth I as part of the Elizabethan Settlement. This settlement included the reinstatement of the Book of Common Prayer, the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, the principle of via media, and established the core of post reformation Church of England teaching. It remained in place with only minor alterations, including a prayer book revision and the introduction of the King James Bible, until the time of the English Civil War.
The Civil War heavily impacted the parishes of the borough of Leicester. The churches were sacked by the puritan Parliamentarian soldiers in the early part of the conflict when Leicester declared itself for parliament and soldiers were billeted with the residents. Following the siege of Leicester in May 1645 the parish's households were pillaged and the residents abused by Prince Rupert's men. Charles I visited the borough on a number of occasions and it is likely that the bells of St Nicholas were among those which were recorded as ringing to welcome him. Following parliaments victory the Church of England was reformed to its most austere extent when the Directory for Public Worship was promulgated by parliament. An old rumour suggests that during the period of the Commonwealth St Nicholas was the one church in the city that refused to obey the rebel parliament and maintained liturgy according to James I's Prayer Book. Following the Restoration of Charles II, the Elizabethan Settlement was reinstated and the definitive edition of the Book of Common Prayer was promulgated by the Fourth Act of Uniformity. This remained the parishes form of worship for the next 350 years, well into the 20th century. While there is no parish record of the various changes at St Nicholas there are for the neighbouring parishes of St Martin's and St Margaret's, which record in exacting detail the sale and purchase of the various changing ritual items and prayer books each stage of the reformation demanded.