St Nicholas, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

From wikipedia:-
"St Nicholas' Church, Kenilworth is a Church of England parish church in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England.

The church is built of local red sandstones. The main phases of building are Decorated Gothic, Perpendicular Gothic and a Gothic Revival Victorian restoration of 1864. It is a Grade I listed building.

The church is a short distance south of the High Street, next to the Norman and Gothic ruins of St Mary's Abbey, over which much of the churchyard of St Nicholas now extends.

No record of when the parish church was founded is known to survive. Geoffrey de Clinton, who was Chamberlain and Treasurer to King Henry I, founded the Augustinian priory (later abbey) of St Mary the Virgin in 1119 and Kenilworth Castle in the early 1120s. About the same time Clinton founded a borough of Kenilworth and a deer park, but there is no record of a parish church for local laity being founded at the same time.

A tax record from AD 1210 notes a chapel in Kenilworth paying a tithe. But there is no record of where that chapel was or what congregation it served. A pair of sandstone cottages, 12 and 13 Castle Green, are the remains of a former more important building. Their orientation and thick walls are consistent with a Norman chapel, and there is even a Mass dial, but there is no proof that these cottages are the chapel recorded in 1210.

Building a parish church for laity next to an abbey church is a common arrangement. St Margaret's, Westminster next to Westminster Abbey is a well-known example. Just as Westminster Abbey held the advowson of St Margaret's, so Kenilworth Priory held that of the parish of St Nicholas.

One of the earliest pieces of masonry in the church of St Nicholas is the base of the font. This is Norman, and therefore predates the late 12th century. The square lower stages of the west tower have massive walls which could also be Norman. But that is conjecture.

The earliest known written evidence of a church for laity at Kenilworth is in the Registers of Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester, which record a "parson of the church at Kenilworth" in 1285. Pope Nicholas IV's taxation list of 1291 also records the church. It is therefore possible that the church of St Nicholas may have been founded in the 13th century, after 1210 and before 1285."

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