Church Of St Thomas And St James

The Church of St Thomas and St James is a Gothic Revival church dating to 1858, consecrated in 1860. It was designed by Flockton and Sons for patron F. W. T. Vernon-Wentworth, with a vestry added in 1879. The church is constructed of coursed, dressed sandstone with a Welsh slate roof. It is built in the Early English style and comprises a four-bay aisled nave with a south porch, a two-bay chancel, and north and south vestries; the south vestry rises as a three-stage tower.

The nave has a chamfered plinth, buttresses at the west angle and between bays three and four. The south porch is in bay two, featuring shafts in the jambs of the pointed arch, a coped gable with a cross, and shafts. The other bays have paired lancet windows with quoined reveals and hoodmoulds. A clerestory has small, cusped lancets in recessed panels, with an eaves corbel table. The west window is a group of three lancets with separate hoods; the gable copings have crosses. The tower has angle buttresses to the lower stages, flanking lancet windows, string courses between stages, paired belfry lancets set in recessed panels beneath corbel tables, with louvres, and a string course that rises as a hood. The tower features an octagonal, broach spire with louvred two-light lucarnes and a weathervane. The chancel is lower, with bay two beyond the tower having a string course rising over a lancet and continuing over the east window of five lancets set in a recessed ashlar panel; two lancets are present on the right side into the vestry.

Inside, the nave features octagonal piers for the double-chamfered aisle arcades, and a similar chancel arch on responds. A two-bay arcade leads to the north vestry and organ chamber incorporating moulded arches, the eastern arch subdivided by a central pier with a blind quatrefoil in an ashlar spandrel. The sanctuary has encaustic-tiled flooring. The octagonal font, dating to 1879, has a wrought-iron cover, replacing an original font made of coal. The pulpit is octagonal, set on marble shafts, and features carved panels in ogee-headed niches and an eagle lecturn carved on the cornice. Traceried dado panelling is also present; contemporary fittings include linenfold-panelled, part-glazed inner porch doors beneath an arch inscribed "Enter into His Gates with thanksgiving.” Stained glass is found in the east and west windows, designed by Barnett and Co. Leith. The church was originally dedicated to St Thomas prior to amalgamation with St James' in 1955.