St Nicholas' Church and the Civil War

The parish church of St Nicholas stands beside the abbey ruins. The tower is from about 1400, three stages with a battlemented parapet. There are six bells, dated 1636, 1666, 1724 and three of 1773. The church is Grade I listed and open every day in daylight. In November 1644, in the Civil War, Parliamentarian troops under Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper attacked the Royalist garrison the Strangways family had put in the village. The men holding the church gave up. The two bullet holes in the early 17th-century oak pulpit are from that fight. The Strangways' house beside the abbey caught fire in the assault, and when the flames reached the gunpowder store the house went up, taking the old abbey records stored inside it and about sixty of the Parliamentarian soldiers with it. Sir John Strangways and his son were sent to the Tower and heavily fined. The family moved to Melbury House near Evershot, and that is where they still are.