Church Of St Philip And St James

TOW LAW CHURCH LANE NZ 13 NW (East end)

23/311 Church of St. Philip and St. James GV II Parish church. Circa 1867-1869 by C. Hodgson Fowler. Roughly-squared coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings; stone spire. Nave with west porch and south-west tower; chancel with north vestry. Decorated style. Full-width porch has two 2-centred-arched doors, boarded and with elaborate hinges, under continuous drip string which is a sill string for 3 central lancets. Wide buttresses with steeply-coped setback under gabled coping of pent roof. Large wheel window above and octagonal tower at right. Tower has buttresses on alternate sides, with slit windows to stair and shouldered-arched belfry openings, under octagonal spire with lucarnes.

3-bay nave has paired lancets in first 2 bays, lancet and 2-light window in third; 2-light window and lancet in chancel. 5-light east window under 8-foiled roundel. Steeply-pitched roof has stone cross finials; weather-cock finial on spire.

Interior: coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings. King-post nave roof with arch-braced scissor trusses on stone-corbelled brackets; chancel has panelled wood barrel vault, 2-centred chancel arch of 2 orders, the inner on short shafts with clasping rings. Windows have wide 2-centred rere-arches. Similarly-shaped organ arch and drip-mould over trefoil-headed vestry doorway. Full-width painted panel below east window; wood-panelled chancel. Unusual rood screen composed of varnished applied cones and other fruit. Glass includes east window in memory of M.H. Simpson, first vicar; north windows signed E. Smyth Sc. (c.1945) and Stanley Murray Scott 1965. Other windows original leaded lights in rectangular and lozenge patterns. Stone pulpit with open balustrade and marble shafts; square stone font on pedestal and 4 shafts. High-quality doors and original fittings, with stencilled felted draught curtains to inner doors.

Listing NGR: NZ1232838941