The Church of St Nicholas was originally built in 1911, using stone from the quarry owned by the Chappell Charity. St Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and young boys. Mr Harry Fedden, a Bristol philanthropist, had been instrumental in setting up the National Nautical School in October 1869, aboard T.S. Formidable, loaned by Admiralty and moored in the Channel off Portishead, ‘to train boys who would otherwise through poverty or parental neglect, or being orphans, be left destitute and homeless, and in danger of being contaminated with vice and crime’. The Reverend Charles Kingsley of Water Babies fame was present at the opening.
In 1906, the school moved to its new building and the opening ceremony was attended by Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. Her sister, Princess Henry of Battenburg, had laid the foundation stone in 1904. Mr Fedden was determined that the new school should have a chapel and a chaplain. The Right Hon. Sir W. H. Wills, of the tobacco family, gave £1,350 towards the cost of £6,500 for site and building. Other members of the Wills family gave £2,000 and the remainder came as smaller gifts. The foundation stone was laid by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt. Revd. Henry Kennion, and he was also present at the dedication ceremony on 14th May 1912.
The chapel became the centrepiece of school life. Attendance at early communion services was voluntary, but other Sunday services were ceremonial parades with band, choir, servers and readers, all of which required week-day practice. In addition to the usual Sunday services, there were baptisms and confirmations, and daily services after Divisions.
In 1982 the school was vacated and the remaining boys were sent to a school in Bristol. However, there are many reminders of the school in the chapel, such as the altar, which is made from some of the timbers of T.S. Formidable.
A previous chaplain tells us that the fine oil painting of T.S. Formidable which hangs in the church was originally presented to Henry Fedden, and the heraldic shields around the walls were partly made by the boys in the school workshops.
The East window is unusual with its mixture of saints and sailors: God, St Paul and St Andrew, with Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson; also pictures of warships of 1st, 10th, 16th and 20th centuries with that of T.S. Formidable. This window was given in memory of Henry’s son, Vincent.
At the West end, Captain Robert Scott’s expedition to the South Pole is commemorated, in a window dedicated to A. Romilly Fedden. The standard which Scott carried around the world still hangs beside his window. Scott, who died the year the chapel was built, faces the River Severn where, a few miles upstream, his son Peter created a sanctuary for water-birds at Slimbridge.
Please bring your own pen!