Church Of St James

Church of St James

A Grade I listed church of the 15th and 16th centuries, built in yellow and red sandstone ashlar with a lead roof. The building comprises a western tower, nave and chancel in the Perpendicular style.

The tower, constructed of red sandstone, dates from around 1497 to 1536. Its western face features a moulded plinth with diagonal buttresses and a central western doorway with a four-centred arch decorated with quatrefoils and daggers to the spandrels. Above the doorway is a row of square panels containing pointed quatrefoils, topped by a cyma-moulded string course. A three-light window with hood mould and figurehead stops rises above this, with a canopied niche above supported by an angel bearing a shield and crocket to the canopy. At the same level, the outer faces of the diagonal buttresses carry similar smaller canopied niches with crockets. Three shields in relief surmount the central niche, with a circular clock face above them. A string course runs below the belfry stage, which features 2-light louvred openings with hood moulds and figurehead label-stops. Below the battlemented parapet is a row of square decorated panels; the parapet itself has gargoyles to the centres and angles, above which rise panelled piers with crocketed pinnacles. The south and north faces carry shields and similar belfry stages.

The nave, built in yellow sandstone suggesting an earlier date than the tower and chancel, has a moulded plinth and three bays with three-light windows that gradually widen towards the east. Each window has a hood mould with label stops of human and animal form. Buttresses between the bays terminate in square panelled piers and crocketed pinnacles. Diagonal buttresses at the right and left mark the original termination points before the tower and chancel were added. A later Perpendicular porch of red sandstone, positioned between the first and second bays from the left, features diagonal buttresses. The porch door has a four-centred arch with circular panels to the spandrels and a canopied niche above. Large gargoyles to the sides support octagonal panelled and crocketed pinnacles, with a plaid parapet between these having chamfered coping. The porch reveals contain 2-light windows, the left one having label stops of paired heads. The north face is similar except for the absence of the porch and has a door at the first bay to the right.

The chancel, built in yellow sandstone at lower courses (re-used from the western end of the nave when the tower arch was introduced) and red sandstone in the upper courses, has two bays on its south face. The windows here are wider than those of the nave and feature three lights with a buttress between them and an angle buttress at the right. A priest's door stands to the right of the left-hand bay. The north side is similar. The eastern end displays a five-light central window with figurehead label stops to the hood-mould. A sanctus bellcote at the gable apex features panelled sides and a cross at the summit.

The interior contains a panelled ceiling to the nave with moulded principals supported on wall posts and arched braces rising from figurehead corbels. The chancel ceiling consists of square panels. Remnants of the sides of the original eastern window are visible in the nave. The chancel screen dates from 1894 and was designed by J Oldrid Scott, based upon the screen at Elvaston in Derbyshire. An octagonal 16th-century panelled ashlar font rests on a 19th-century stem with a wooden cover, probably also by J Oldrid Scott.

The church contains several significant monuments: a table tomb to Francis Fitton (1608) with an effigy above and a skeleton below; recumbent effigies of Sir Edward Fitton and his wife (1619) with children kneeling along the tomb-chest and a wall-plate on the east wall; a seated figure of Dame Alice Fitton (1627) in widow's garb with children kneeling in front of and behind her; and a tomb to Sir Edward Fitton (1643) and his wife, featuring recumbent effigies and a figure of a girl, with a wall-plate to the eastern wall and a trophy to the south wall, originally having a canopy over it.