Church Of St James

Church of St James

A parish church built in 1829-30 by Samuel Rowland, a Liverpool architect, and re-ordered internally in 1897. The building is constructed of red-sandstone ashlar with a slate roof.

The church is planned with a wide nave incorporating entrance vestibules at the west end and an embraced west tower, a short lower chancel, and north and south vestries.

The exterior demonstrates the simple Gothic style characteristic of the early 19th century. The nave is notably wide and tall, designed to accommodate a three-sided gallery, and features clasping buttresses with pinnacles and a coped parapet. The tall windows are predominantly three-light openings with wood-framed intersecting tracery and transoms, finished with simple hood moulds. The six-bay south wall has varied fenestration: the first window is shorter and sits above square-headed doors, the fourth window lacks tracery, and the sixth is shorter above a pointed priest's doorway under a continuous chamfer. Double square-headed doors on the north side correspond with those on the south. The west front contains three-light windows flanking a three-stage tower with clasping polygonal buttresses and an embattled parapet with pinnacles. The original west doorway has been converted to a window with wooden cusped Y-tracery, above which sits a blind rose window in a lozenge panel. The second stage contains a blind oculus, possibly originally intended to frame a clock, while the upper stage features two-light Decorated openings with louvres and gilded clock faces. The chancel has a triple-pointed east window with stone mullions, and the vestries are lit by Y-tracery windows with a north doorway reached by steps.

The interior now presents a large unstructured nave space following the removal of the galleries. Walls are plastered, and the nave ceiling is flat plaster on a moulded cornice. The west wall contains inserted arches from the entrance vestibules, with former gallery stairs removed. The plastered tower arch is steeply pointed, and the chancel arch has a single order of chamfer. The nave floor is laid with floorboards, with a section of parquet floor at the west end.

The octagonal font, featuring head corbels on the underside of the bowl, was probably brought from the older church. Early 20th-century choir stalls have ends with blind tracery and a frontal with open arcading. The sanctuary walls are panelled, likely from the early 20th century, while the reredos is dated 1963, designed by H.H. Wilson and carved by S.W. Hodges, incorporating a Christus Rex in high relief. A wall tablet commemorates Rev Richard Wager Allix, the first incumbent of the new church, with a sarcophagus and monogram. Several stained-glass windows are present: a Nativity window in the south wall by Caroline Townshend and Joan Howson (1933), a 1914-18 war-memorial window in the west, and three early 20th-century windows by Alfred O. Hemmings depicting the Good Shepherd, Christ with Peter and John, and Christ with Mary and Martha. The highly coloured east window, inserted after the organ loft was removed, shows the Last Supper and Ascension.

Originally known as St James, Latchford, the church was built between 1829 and 1830 by Samuel Rowland, a Liverpool architect who died in 1844 and was known for Greek Revival secular buildings and church commissions in the locality. The contractor was Robert Haddock of Warrington. The new church replaced an older church on a different site. Original plans show a three-sided gallery with curved front, accessed by stairs in the north and south vestibules, with the main entrance through the west tower. The north vestry, described as a porch on the original plan, may have been added simply to balance the south vestry. Historic photographs held in the church document box pews and an organ installed in a chancel loft. In 1897, the box pews, gallery, and gallery stairs were removed, and arches were inserted in the west nave wall from the entrance vestibules.