IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Crest Heights, BRISTOL, BS20 8FE

This OS cut mark can be found on the garage of No333 Nore Road. It marks a point 43.141m above mean sea level.

Looking down towards the estuary.

The church was founded in 1911 as part of the National Nautical School that lies just down the hillside, overlooking the sea. It served the many young boys who were brought up in the institution until the school closed in 1982. It is now partly associated with the United Reformed Church. See Image] for the statues over the entrance.

The entrance to St Nicholas on Nore Road features these winged guardians.

St Nicholas', built in 1911, was the National Nautical School College Chapel until 1980. It was purchased by the Portishead Parish in 1985. The College used the training ship ‘Formidable’, an old wooden warship used as a reformatory from 1869-1906 for up to 300 boys from the streets of Bristol, who were trained as seamen. When it was replaced, part of the ship was incorporated into the main altar of St Nicholas' Church. It is a Grade II listed building (List Entry Number: 1255545 https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1255545 Historic England).

The roof tiles are cast with the sun and the cross.

This large and impressive church has a local connection to the old Nautical School just up the hill. Originally, a training ship was moored out in the Bristol Channel ‘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’. In other words it was a floating orphanage in all but name. Having gradually rotted over time a Mr Harry Fedden, a Bristol philanthropist, was a prime mover in founding a land-based school to replace the wooden ship. That opened in 1906 and this new church for the boys was founded in 1911, using stone from the Chappell Charity quarry. A benchmark can be seen on the church's east angle - see Image St Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and young boys.