Church of St James is a Grade II listed building in the Rochdale local planning authority area, England. First listed on 24 January 1967. Church.
Church of St James
- WRENN ID
- quartered-lead-tallow
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Rochdale
- Constituency
- Rochdale MP: Paul Waugh (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 24 January 1967
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of St James, Saint James Street
- OS grid reference
- SD 928 128
- Coordinates
- 53.61219, -2.10915
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St James is a Grade II listed church built between 1868 and 1869 by architect G. E. Street for the Schofield family. It is constructed of rock-faced stone and features a slate roof. The church is designed in the Gothic revival style and includes a nave with a clerestory, aisles, a south porch, a west tower, and a chancel flanked by an organ chamber and a side chapel.
The church has a five-bay nave and aisles, characterized by a projecting plinth and weathered buttresses. The gabled porch is located in the first bay, while the other bays contain two-light aisle windows with curvilinear tracery and triple clerestory lights with cusped heads. The gables are coped and topped with finials. The west window has four lights, and the east window has five lights. The side chapel and organ chamber/vestry feature ogee-arched doorways.
The two-stage tower has diagonal buttresses and an octagonal stair turret, with two-light belfry openings. It is adorned with a ballflower-enriched band below a parapet featuring blind cusping, gargoyles, a pyramidal roof, and pinnacles that were removed in 1984.
Inside, the church has a double-chamfered nave arcade supported by octagonal columns with naturalistic foliage capitals, crafted by sculptor T. Earp. The nave features double-chamfered chancel and tower arches, with king-post roof trusses in the nave and arch-braced collar-tie roof trusses in the chancel. Notable interior elements include sedilia, a piscina, a stone font, a pulpit, stained glass, and timber fittings.
Local climate
Church of St James sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,080 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 86% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 79% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 50 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 92% of listed buildings. Of these, 29 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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