Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas, Liverpool

The Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas is the Anglican parish church of Liverpool, standing close to the River Mersey near the Pier Head — a site that has been a place of worship since at least the 1250s, before the great port had grown beyond a fishing village. Known affectionately as "the Old Church" or "St Nicks", it carries the dedication of the patron saint of sailors with perfect fitness, and from 1813 to 1868, at 174 feet, it was the tallest building in Liverpool. A Grade II listed building and a member of the Greater Churches Group, it remains an active parish church in the diocese, archdeaconry and deanery of Liverpool.

Liverpool received its charter from King John in 1207, and by the 1250s a small stone chapel known as St Mary del Quay had been built, probably near the site of the present tower, overlooking a quay on the Mersey — in those days the river reached the church garden walls at high tide. In 1355 the chapel was judged too small for the growing borough, and a new chapel dedicated to St Mary and St Nicholas was begun on land granted to the burgesses by the Duke of Lancaster, under construction for more than a century. Plague struck in 1361, the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry licensed the burial ground, and the chapel was consecrated the following year. By the late fifteenth century a north aisle the size of the original nave had been added and three chantry altars established, each with its own priest paid by a wealthy patron, a fourth following in 1515.

The Reformation abolished the chantries, and the building was adapted in stages to the worship of the Book of Common Prayer. Between 1673 and 1718 it was extended piecemeal, with galleries built for Liverpool's booming population, and a spire was added in 1746 — along with the church's most famous ornament, the gilded copper weather vane in the form of a ship, four feet four inches long, which has sailed above the town ever since. Local legend insists the vane represents the Richard Donnelly, a ship said to have sunk in Liverpool Bay, source of the deathless Scouse phrase "I'll be waiting till Dick docks" — meaning forever — though the Liverpool Maritime Museum has confirmed no record of any such ship exists. In 1699 Liverpool, then about 5,000 people, was created an independent parish with, unusually, two parish churches and two rectors: Our Lady and St Nicholas, and the new St Peter's. In 1775 the parish rebuilt the walls of the old church, keeping the galleries — the congregation paid pew rents — and setting a new roof on classical columns resting on medieval bases.

Tragedy struck on Sunday 11 February 1810. The congregation had repeatedly warned officials that the spire was unsafe, and as the bells rang and worshippers gathered for morning service, the spire crashed into the nave, killing twenty-five people — twenty-one of them under fifteen, most of them girls from Moorfields Charity School. The original ring of six bells, dating from 1636 to 1724, was destroyed. Between 1811 and 1815 a new tower and lantern were built on the north side to designs by Thomas Harrison of Chester, the last remains of St Mary del Quay — by then in use as a tavern — were demolished, and a new ring of twelve bells by Dobson of Downham Market was installed; the renovated ship weather vane, which probably survived the fall, was re-erected with sails dated 1815. By 1865 the parish held twenty-seven churches serving some 275,000 people; since 1916 Our Lady and St Nicholas has been the Parish Church of Liverpool, its old partner St Peter's — which had served as pro-cathedral for the new Anglican diocese — being demolished in 1922. The churchyard, where a gun battery stood from 1758 to 1772 to defend the river, closed to burials in 1849 and became a public garden in 1891 in memory of the shipowner James Harrison.

The Second World War nearly ended the church's story. The bells were removed for safety and never rehung, and on 21 December 1940 a German air raid set the main body of the church ablaze, leaving only the parish rooms, vestries and Harrison's nineteenth-century tower. Rebuilding began in March 1949, and the new church was consecrated on 18 October 1952, the Feast of St Luke, with a new ring of twelve bells by John Taylor & Co. of Loughborough. The architect Edward C. Butler made bold changes: he placed the altar at the western end rather than the traditional east, emphasised the sanctuary over the pulpit, omitted the galleries that had served the vast congregations of the past, raised the nave forty-six feet taller, and set the organ and refectory above the narthex. The distinctive lantern spire remains easily spotted from the river despite the taller towers of the business district around it.

The interior weaves together the church's many histories. The woodwork of nave and sanctuary is carved with the vine — "I am the vine, you are the branches" — and the Rood hanging between nave and sanctuary, Christ with Our Lady and St John, was carved from the old oak bell frame of the tower. A stained glass window in the south-east corner shows Our Lady in glory and St Nicholas holding a ship, inscribed "For the Healing of the Nations", and the north-east corner holds the war memorial of the Cunard Steamship Company, placed here in 1989. The chapel south of the sanctuary is St Peter's, commemorating the demolished co-parish church, with its eighteenth-century wooden altar table and a wall cross formed from charred timbers of the burned church; the Sacrament is reserved here for weekday Communions. The north chapel, originally St George's after another vanished Liverpool church, was rededicated in 1993 — for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic — as the Maritime Chapel of St Mary del Quay, memorialising the medieval shrine: a bronze statue of Our Lady standing in the prow of a boat, by the Liverpool artist Arthur Dooley, presides over a Book of Remembrance listing mariners lost at sea, with furnishings by Robin McGhie. Behind the high altar hangs an icon of the crucifixion by the Romanian artist Tatiana Nichita, donated in memory of Merseyside Police Constable Neil Doyle, murdered off-duty in the city centre, whose funeral was held here. The organ, by Rushworth and Dreaper of Liverpool, is dedicated to Charles W. Bridson, organist from 1902 to 1949 — bridging, in one lifetime of service, the old church and the new.