Church Of St Philip And St James

The Church of St. Philip and St. James is a parish church built between 1867 and 1869 by C. Hodgson Fowler. It is constructed from roughly-squared coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings and features a Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings and a stone spire. The church has a nave with a west porch and a south-west tower, as well as a chancel that includes a north vestry. It is designed in the Decorated style.

The full-width porch has two 2-centred-arched doors that are boarded and equipped with elaborate hinges, situated under a continuous drip string that also serves as a sill string for three central lancets. The nave is supported by wide buttresses with steeply-coped setbacks beneath the gabled coping of a pent roof. Above the porch is a large wheel window, and the octagonal tower is located to the right. The tower features buttresses on alternate sides, slit windows for the stairway, and shouldered-arched openings for the belfry, topped by an octagonal spire with lucarnes.

Inside, the nave has a king-post roof with arch-braced scissor trusses resting on stone-corbelled brackets. The chancel features a panelled wood barrel vault and a 2-centred chancel arch composed of two orders, with the inner arch supported by short shafts with clasping rings. The windows have wide 2-centred rere-arches, and there is a similarly-shaped organ arch and a drip-mould over the trefoil-headed vestry doorway. A full-width painted panel is located below the east window, and the chancel is wood-panelled.

An unusual rood screen made of varnished applied cones and other fruit is present. The glass includes an east window dedicated to M.H. Simpson, the first vicar, and north windows signed by E. Smyth Sc. (circa 1945) and Stanley Murray Scott from 1965. Other windows feature original leaded lights in rectangular and lozenge patterns. The stone pulpit has an open balustrade and marble shafts, while the square stone font is set on a pedestal with four shafts. The church also retains high-quality doors and original fittings, including stencilled felted draught curtains for the inner doors.