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St Nicholas Church, Chawton has launched a new monthly service for children and young families. These services will be at 10a.m. on the fourth Sunday of the month. The first service will be on Sunday 24th March. Led by Phillip Dixon our lay Young families minister the service will last  about half an hour , with lively songs and stories. please bring your children and grandchildren , they will enjoy it, and you will too.

Introduction

A church has stood on the site of the present St. Nicholas since at least 1270 when it was mentioned in a diocesan document, but there is reason to believe that a place of worship existed there well before that date. The building was enlarged and improved inside and out over the years and much of it was re-built in the early Victorian period. However a disastrous fire in 1871 effectively destroyed the whole building except for the chancel so that the present nave, north aisle, vestry and tower date only from 1872/3 although many of the early memorials were saved and are still on the walls.

The architect of the new church was Mr, later Sir Arthur Blomfield, the builder was Messrs Dyer of Alton, and the cost was about £2300. The construction is of flint faced with Bath stone and the style was at the time described as Early Decorated Gothic. The building remains virtually unaltered to this day and is recognized as a fine example of a Victorian parish church and is now listed Grade 2*.

The manor of Chawton is listed in the Doomsday Book of 1086 as Cheltone meaning 'the place where calves are reared' but since it would not have been taxable there is no mention of any church which may have been in the village at the time. The manor was given by William the Conqueror to a Norman follower, Hugh de Port, a man of considerable piety who ended his days as a monk, and it seems likely that he would have established some kind of place of worship whilst he occupied these lands particularly since the village was on the pilgrims route from Winchester to Canterbury.

The first real evidence of a church points to its having been built between 1225 and 1250 but the earliest known reference in official church records to a church in Chautone appears in a list of churches and chapels in the Diocese of Winchester dated 1270. It is possible that this church was dedicated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas which were the dedications on the two pre-reformation bells which the church contained. In 1289 Sir John de St. John was the first recorded patron and in that year William Wainbridge was replaced as Rector of Chawton by Thomas de St John. The names are known of all subsequent patrons and incumbents, the former including Queen Elizabeth, King Charles I (during the lunacy of the actual patron) and from 1578, when they acquired the manor, the Knight family until they passed it to the Bishop of Winchester in 1953 on the joining of Chawton and Farringdon as a benefice.