Church Of Saint James

The Church of St James is a church with origins in the 12th century, a chancel dating from the early 13th century, and significant restoration work in 1873 by George Gilbert Scott, with a west tower and south porch added around 1902 by Temple Moore. It is constructed of ashlar with plain tile roofs.

The church comprises a west tower, a three-bay nave with a south porch, and a two-bay chancel. The west tower has a chamfered plinth, diagonal buttresses, chamfered string courses, a two-light square-headed belfry opening with tracery in the Perpendicular style, a crenellated parapet, and a two-light pointed west window with tracery in the Curvilinear style. The nave has a chamfered plinth and a two-light square-headed window with reticulated tracery to the east. A late 19th-century pointed south door and a 12th-century round-headed north door are present, the latter featuring a narrow chamfer, a hoodmould with face-stops, and a small round-headed window to the east with a continuous roll-moulding and a carved head depicting centripetal arrows. The chancel has a chamfered plinth, a lancet under a hoodmould, a shuttered low side window, a two-light window, a three-light window, a pointed priests' door with a continuous chamfer, and a three-light pointed east window with reticulated tracery under a hoodmould with head-stops, complete with a pierced quatrefoil panel to the gable.

Internally, the 12th-century chancel arch is reused as the tower arch, featuring attached shafts with scallop capitals (some with volutes, some with masks and trails), supporting quirk-and-chamfer imposts and a round arch of two orders – the inner order having a double roll moulding to the soffit, and the outer with chevron ornament. The hoodmould includes a naked human figure and masks. In the base of the tower is a cross-shaft from around 1000 AD, comprising two fitted fragments and decorated with figures, foliage, pelta-like shapes, and beasts. A 12th-century font, likely re-tooled and shaped like a cushion capital, is also present. The chancel includes a tomb recess, an ambrey in the north wall, a trefoil-headed piscina in the south wall, and the lower half of a set of sedilia, truncated by an early 14th-century window in the south wall. The church is speculated to have been built as the priory church of the Benedictine nunnery of St Mary, with the Scheduled Site of Nunburnholme Priory located approximately 800 metres to the north east.