Church Of St James With Hall, Sunday School And House Attached

The Church of St James, along with its attached hall, Sunday School, and house, is a Congregational church that is now part of the United Reformed Church. It was built between 1882 and 1884 by T. Lewis Banks. The structure is made of snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings and features grey and green slate roofs. This cruciform church is aligned north-south and includes corner and side aisles, as well as ritual west porches and a vestibule, with the Sunday School, hall, and house located behind it. The design is in a free 13th-century style.

The gabled west front showcases ten arched windows beneath a tall five-bay arcade, with the outer bays being blind. There is a higher blind arcade at the peak of the gable and angle buttresses topped with spirelets. The flanking gabled porches feature double doors with elaborate hinges, triple nook shafts, shouldered surrounds, and carved tympana. The windows are lancet-style, with pairs in the corners and triples in the side aisles. The church has complex high roofs, highlighted by a slate-hung central lantern and a tall octagonal spire.

Inside, the walls are rendered with ashlar dressings above a boarded dado. There are four square piers with shafts that support the arches of the side aisles and the lower arches of the corner aisles. A glass roof is set on pendentives above the lantern, and arch-braced collar trusses are present in the side aisles. The west gallery is also part of the interior. Notably, there is a high Gothic-style pulpit with wrought-iron grilles, and the choir pews serve as a memorial to those who died in both world wars. The church contains much 19th-century painted glass, including two windows by Atkinson Bros. of Newcastle dedicated to Elizabeth and Florence Dunford, created in 1888 and 1919, and another window by G. J. Baguley and Son in memory of William Crossley, who died in 1918.