Church Of St James And St Basil

The Church of St James and St Basil is a parish church located on Fenham Hall Drive in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was built between 1927 and 1931 by architect E.E. Lofting, funded by Sir James Knott in memory of his sons, James and Basil, who were killed in the First World War. The church is constructed from snecked tooled sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring a moulded plinth and large quoins. It has a graduated Lakeland slate roof with roll-moulded gable copings.

The building is designed in a Free Gothic style and includes a nave, a south aisle, a south-east tower, and a tall north vestry. The entrance features double doors that are boarded and studded, set in 2-centred arches; the west door is moulded and shafted, while the south door is under a corbelled shallow gable. The church has tall traceried windows with two lights on the twin-gabled west front, as well as similar windows on the nave and aisle. The tower's south front has smaller traceried windows, and there are three-light windows on the east of the tower and in the chancel, with the chancel window being particularly tall. Both the aisle and nave have a corbel table, and the tower features two small windows above the drip mould of the east window, a Lombard frieze above these, and paired belfry openings with pierced shuttering beneath battlements. A buttressed stair turret at the south-west corner has an octagonal top with a stone spirelet.

Inside, the church has plaster walls with ashlar dressings, a king-post roof, and a ribbed vault in the tower memorial chapel. The interior features a 4-bay arcade of chamfered arches supported by tall octagonal columns, with similar arches leading to the chapel. There are Moorish wood screens on the north side leading to the organ chamber, and a similar arch with an oriel screen above the tower chapel for the organ pipes. Below the sills, there is a corbelled arcaded stone frieze. The chancel floor is marble-flagged, and it contains an inlaid wood altar and retable, along with an elaborately-carved reredos. The church also features high-quality stained glass. Historically, it is noted that the stone used for the construction is said to have come from Dobson's 1830 Newcastle prison, which was demolished around that time.