page_title: St Nicholas' Church, Berden
section_title: Interior
hierarchical_section_title: St Nicholas' Church, Berden / Architecture / Interior
caption_attribution_description: English: St Nicholas' parish church, Berden, Essex: chancel arch and hagioscopes (squints)
context_page_description: St Nicholas' Church is a Grade I listed parish church in the village of Berden, Essex, England.
  Of the Early English Gothic style, the church has a Norman nave with 13th-century transepts and a tower dated to the 15th century. It underwent major restoration in 1868.
  The church held a 20th-century 38-year revival of a "Boy Bishop" miracle play. It contains memorials to significant families of the local Berden Hall and Berden Priory, and to a murdered Berden parish constable.
  St Nicholas’ is part of a joint benefice—sharing a common priest— in the Deanery of Saffron Walden of the Diocese of Chelmsford. Other churches in the group are St Mary the Virgin at Manuden; St Simon and St Jude at Quendon; and All Saints at Rickling.
context_section_description: The church walls and ceilings are rendered and painted white throughout. All windows are glazed with translucent rectilinear glass panels, in clear, red or blue. All flooring is plain red tiling except on the raised chancel sanctuary behind the altar rail where there is added bands of black, white and brown. The chancel east window is part of the 19th-century restoration, but with the use of a c. 1270 capital detail. The c. 1270 chamfered rebated chancel arch has a hood mould finished with human head label stops on both chancel and nave sides. Set within the arch is a further chamfered arch supported by responds—half-piers attached to walls supporting an arch—of semi-circular columns with flat-face faceted moulded bases, and foliate capitals that have been part-restored. A 19th-century-added arched squint is on each side of the chancel arch, each with a chamfered rebate as part of the arch. Set above each squint on the chancel side is a gable as moulding with, at its spring and point, a carved foliated detail. Within the chancel is a 14th-century piscina containing a quatrefoil shaped drain.
  The north transept (or Priory End) windows, east and north, are 19th century but within 14th-century openings. The trussed roof is possibly 16th century with tie beam support added in the 19th. The south transept (or Hall End) east and south windows are 14th century although partly restored. The 15th-century south transept roof trussing is of hammer beam construction, with curved collar braces springing from beams which are supported by curved chamfered brackets. Running on the wall from the hammer beams to the roof line are wind braces, and to the ridge beam is roof truss framing. Both transepts are separated from the nave by c. 20th-century panels and doors rising part way to the top of the arches. The north transept is solid panelling; the south with clear glazed doors to its full width. The north transept is today used as the church vestry room, and the south transept a meeting room with modern furniture. On the south wall of the south transept is a 14th-century piscina with a recessed trefoiled head, a re-cut quatrefoil drain, a head of a woman in a wimple carved at its apex, and a finial above.
  The nave is 13th century in origin, but was rebuilt in the 14th. At the west of the north wall is part of a 12th-century window, now blocked and not visible outside, abutted to the tower wall. The north wall window is 19th century within a 14th-century opening. At the east of the nave is an arch leading to the north transept. This chamfered arch was reused when the nave was widened in the 14th century, and is supported by semi-octagonal responds added in the 19th. The nave south wall arch to the south transept is 13th century, chamfered, with square responds. Between this transept arch and east wall is a blocked 15th-century doorway that led to the loft above a former rood screen. The part-restored south three-light window is late 15th century, but using some material from the 13th. To the west of the window is the south doorway with moulded arch and hood mould. Between the south door and the tower wall is part of a 12th-century window, blocked, as mirror image to that on the north wall.
  At the west of the nave within the tower arch is the 1780 church organ with part of a 15th-century three-panelled screen set in front as part of the organist’s chair—this screen may have come from neighbouring Berden Hall. Within the nave against the north wall of the chancel arch is an octagonal oak pulpit with ornamented panelling taken from an earlier 17th-century pulpit. Behind the pulpit on the chancel arch west face is inscribed, in Lomardic capitals, a mason inscription: “Gefrai Limathun” (Geoffrey the Mason). The church octagonal font sits at the west of the nave central to the tower arch, and is plain and painted white, with a plain octagonal wood cover on which sits a floral display.
  Tower bells are one each by W. and P. Wightman (1695); J. Keene (possibly 1613); Robert Oldfield (1613); and Thomas Newman of Cambridge.
  Church plate includes a 17
caption: Chancel arch with squint niches
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