St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn

St Nicholas’ Chapel in King’s Lynn has a surprisingly modest name considering its huge scale. Like many East Anglian wool towns, King's Lynn was awash with money in the fifteenth-century, and it built churches far larger and grander than they needed to be, and for which I certainly offer no complaint. Sadly, the Churches Conservation Trust had not opened it on the day I called; I left a waspish review in return, thinking that the month of August might have been made a priority. Nevertheless, there was enough of the externals to give me an appreciation of the place, and I left not feeling as aggrieved as I imagined.

The tower did looked a little small and out of place. It was built in an Early English style, replete with simple and modest pointed arches, which can be dated to about 1200. See how its windows are thinner and plainer than the ones on its other walls, which were built around 1400 in a more opulent, ‘perpendicular’ style. Their tracery is more complicated, their arches are sometimes ‘flatter’ and they let in altogether more light than their older counterparts. Why the good folk of Lynn did not rebuild St Nicholas’ tower when they rebuilt the rest is not clear, but we effectively have two distinct, though not unrelated, architectural styles, side by side.

Although those not versed in the differences of the gothic style may see no difference between tower and nave, so others may look at our theology and not understand the different strands which make it up. We are children of the Reformers, the Puritans, the Great Awakening and the Victorians. Yet whatever our streams of influence, wherever we can trace our theological heritage, may we always  be Bible folk, first and foremost.