Church Of St James

A parish church built in 1839-42 by an unknown architect, located on St James Street in Clitheroe. The building exemplifies the neo-Norman style applied to Georgian planning principles.

Exterior

The church is constructed from roughcast walls with smooth-rendered architraves, hammer-dressed quoins and buttresses, and coursed masonry to the upper stage of the tower, all beneath a slate roof. The main west front, painted cream, terminates the vista down St James Street and features a three-stage tower. The lower two stages have angle-buttresses, while the upper stage is topped with a cornice on head corbels supporting an arcaded parapet and large square corner pinnacles.

The tall round-headed west doorway displays continuous moulding and has replacement doors. The second stage contains a two-light window with shafts bearing scalloped capitals, flanked by bullseye windows in lozenge frames; the west face had a clock inserted in 1925. The upper stage openings sit in recessed panels below Lombard friezes, with shafts featuring scalloped capitals and chevrons decorating the arches.

Tall lean-to porches are positioned against the tower. Former doorways, ornamented with simple continuous chevrons, have been converted to windows, above which lie openings for the former gallery stairs. The nave extends in six narrow buttressed bays, each with round-headed windows. On the south side the first two bays are obscured by a parish centre extension added around 2000. A doorway appears in the fifth bay on the north side.

The short chancel has triple stepped east windows. The low south vestry projects beyond the chancel's east end, displaying two round-headed windows in its east gable and a studded south door. The north lean-to vestry is lit by a round-headed east window.

Interior

The nave forms a cavernous space following the removal of galleries. It retains a queen-post roof on corbelled brackets with arcading above the tie-beams and a plastered ceiling divided into large panels. The chancel arch features semi-circular responds with waterleaf capitals, and the stepped arch displays chevron ornament. The chancel itself has a plaster barrel ceiling and tile floor. Walls expose rubble stone with freestone dressings; a blind arch in the second stage of the west tower wall might originally have opened to the gallery.

A partition, integral with the parish centre extension, now separates the west portion of the nave from the main body of the church. Original stairs have been removed from the west porches.

The nave retains a dado with arcaded upper tier panelling. The chancel also has a dado with an arcaded upper tier; in the east wall, painted metal boards bear texts of the Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, Apostles' Creed, and four of the Thirty-nine Articles.

The Perpendicular font, probably dating to 1839, carries Passion and other symbols around the bowl, mounted on an arcaded stem. Benches from the original gallery, with shaped ends, have been re-erected in a new west gallery. The east window depicts the Ascension and saints; two brightly coloured nave windows from the 1860s show New Testament scenes.

Historical Development

The church originally followed a conventional late-Georgian layout with a nave fitted for a gallery, a short chancel, and porches containing separate gallery stairs distinct from the main entrance. Around 2000, a substantial alteration occurred with the construction of an extension on the south-west side, which separated the porches and west end of the nave from the main body of the church. Many original fixtures have been removed during these changes.