St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick

There has been a church on the Chiswick site since at least 1181 in Norman times. The church was formally visited by a senior cleric and an inventory made at "the unusually early date of 1252": {{blockquote|Ornamenta inventa apud Chesewith die Sanctorum Johannis et Pauli Anno Domini M^o. CC^o. L^o. secundo. Mary Cromwell, Countess Fauconberg, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, was buried in the church on 24 March 1713. More recently, Major Bernard Montgomery, later Field Marshal and 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, married Betty Carver in the church on 27 July 1927.

The current church dates from 1882 to 1884, when it was rebuilt to a design by the architect John Loughborough Pearson, except for the west tower which was built for William Bordall (vicar 1416–1435). Because of the small distance between the tower and the road at Church Street, Pearson made the nave short but wide, so it is nearly square in plan. The Duke of Devonshire gave £1,000 for the rebuilding, but most of the cost was paid for by Henry Smith of the nearby Griffin Brewery company, Fuller, Smith & Turner. The church is built of courses of squared Kentish ragstone masonry in the Perpendicular style. It has a stone coping with a copper roof. Inside the church, surviving 15th-century…