St Nicholas' Church, Fisherton Delamere

Part of the Sacred Spaces project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sacredspaces

Recorded by Nick St. George, with thanks to the Churches Conservation Trust.

This hillside church stands in a pretty churchyard and is a convenient stopping point for Wylye Valley walkers with wonderful views. There has been a church here since Norman times and the font in the church today dates from that period. However, the current building was built in the fourteenth century and then largely rebuilt in the medieval style in the nineteenth century, using the original materials. The outside is built in a chequerboard pattern of flint and stone, typical of many churches in this area. Inside it is light and airy. There is an elegant screen which dates only from 1912 - the architect F C Eden was commissioned to design it, as well as other woodwork in the church. He had intended the screen to be painted, but this was never carried out, mainly because the screen was tremendously unpopular with the people of the parish. One of the most touching monuments in the church is a poignant memorial to two babies of Thomas and Joan Crockford, showing one child in bed and the other wrapped in a shroud - Thomas Crockford was the vicar in the 1600s.