St Nicholas Cole Abbey is a church in the City of London located on what is now Queen Victoria Street. Recorded from the twelfth century, the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The church suffered substantial bomb damage from German bombs during the London Blitz in the Second World War and was reconstructed by Arthur Bailey in 1961–2.
The church is dedicated to the 4th century St Nicholas of Myra. The name "Cole Abbey" is derived from "coldharbour", a medieval word for a traveller's shelter or shelter from the cold. The church was never an abbey. The earliest reference to the church is in a letter of Pope Lucius II in 1144–5.
St Nicholas of Myra is patron saint of, among other groups, children and fishermen, and the church has special ties with both. An inventory of the church's possessions taken at the time of the Protestant Reformation includes vestments for children, suggesting that the church maintained the tradition of electing a boy bishop on Saint Nicholas Day. Deeds in the reign of Richard I refer to a new fish market near St Nicholas Cole Abbey. In a Charter of 1272, the church is referred to as "St Nick's behind Fish Street". During the 16th century, several fishmongers were buried here and John Stow records that, during the reign of Elizabeth I, a lead and stone cistern, fed by the Thames, was set up against the north wall "for the care and commodity of the Fishmongers in and about Old Fish Street".
Like all English churches, St Nicholas Cole Abbey became Protestant during the Reformation. Upon the accession of Queen Mary I, it was the first church to celebrate Mass (on 23 August 1553). The incumbent rector, Thomas Sowdley, had obtained a licence to marry during the reign of Edward VI and was deprived of his living as a result. In the same month as the coronation of Mary I, John Strype recorded "Another priest called sir Tho. Snowdel, [i.e. Sowdley] whom they nicknamed 'Parson Chicken', was carted through Cheapside, for assoiling an old acquaintance of his in a ditch in Finsbury field; and was at that riding saluted with chamber-pots and rotten eggs". Sowdley regained his living on the accession of Elizabeth I.
A century later, the living of St Nicholas Cole Abbey was owned by Colonel Francis Hacker, a Puritan who commanded the execution detail of Charles I.
The church was destroyed in the Great Fire. Charles II promised the site to the Lutheran community but lobbying prevented this from being granted and the parish was combined with that of St Nicholas Olave, a nearby church also destroyed but not rebuilt. The church was rebuilt between 1672 and 1678 at a cost of £5042. Included in the building accounts are the items "Dinner for Dr Wren and other Company – £2 14s 0d" and "Half a pint of canary for Dr Wren's coachmen – 6d". It was the first church of the fifty-one lost in the Great Fire to be rebuilt.
In 1737, the early Methodist leader George Whitefield preached a sermon on "Profane swearing in church" at St Nicholas Cole Abbey.
The post-Fire church was built with its façade to the north on what was then Fish Street (and what is now Distaff Lane) and the east on Old Fish Street Hill. Victorian urban redevelopment changed the local street plan and the south wall of the church, instead of being hemmed in by buildings now overlooked the newly-built Queen Victoria Street. This necessitated a reordering of the church, in 1874, with windows being opened up to the south and the main doorway moving from the northwest tower to the south.
Smoke generated by underground trains so blackened the exterior that in the late 19th century, the church became known as "St Nicholas Cole Hole Abbey".
In May 1881, church attendance under the Reverend Henry Stebbing was down to one man and one woman. Then, in 1883, Henry Shuttleworth was appointed rector, a position he held until 1900. Shuttleworth was a Christian Socialist who installed a bar, established a prodigious musical programme and made the church a centre for debate. This had an effect, as by 1891 St Nicholas Cole Abbey had the largest congregation of any City church, numbering up to 450 worshippers on a Sunday evening. A contemporary vicar commented: "In St. Nicholas Cole Abbey there is good preaching and divine worship is also carried out in the most reverential manner. In other City churches ... as a rule, they [the rectors] are themselves the most wretched preachers and bad readers."
On 10 May 1941 London suffered its worst air raid during the entire War, with 1,436 people killed and several major buildings destroyed or severely damaged. Among them was St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The church remained a shell until restored under Arthur Bailey and reconsecrated in 1962.