Church Of St James

Church of St. James

A parish church of early 14th-century date, with a 15th-century west tower and clerestory. The building was restored in 1840. It comprises a west tower, a five-bay nave and chancel in one structure, a north aisle, a south porch, and a north-west vestry.

The west tower has three stages with offsets and diagonal buttresses. It is topped with a hollow chamfered parapet string and a crenellated parapet. The pointed west door has a roll-moulded edge to a hollowed surround, with a hood mould terminating in carved heads. Directly above is a two-centred window containing three cinquefoil-headed lights with Perpendicular tracery and a hood-mould terminating in heads. The belfry openings each contain two trefoil-headed lights with a quatrefoil in the central spandrel.

The south side of the nave features a 19th-century gabled porch with rendered walls, diagonal buttresses, and a pointed doorway. The westernmost window on this side is pointed with Y-tracery. The next window is also pointed and contains three cinquefoil-headed lights. The two chancel windows are square-headed and transomed, each displaying two ogee trefoil-headed lights with the beginnings of reticulated tracery. These two bays are built of coursed rubble in contrast to the large dressed freestone blocks of the nave, though the upper courses are of dressed stone. This indicates that the chancel is stratigraphically earlier than the rest of the building. Between the two chancel windows is a pointed door with a chamfered surround and hood mould ending in carved heads. A plain parapet with hollow moulded string runs above, with a gargoyle positioned above the priest's door.

On the north side, the east window of the aisle contains three trefoil-headed lights with reticulated tracery and a hood-mould without stops. All windows on the north side are square-headed with the beginnings of reticulated tracery. Four square-headed clerestory windows, each containing two trefoil-headed lights with sunken spandrels, light the upper part. A blocked north door with a pointed arch, ogee-moulded surround, and hood mould is visible. The vestry, situated in the angle between the tower and aisle, has two-light windows matching those on the north side and a 19th-century pointed door.

The interior contains no structural division between the nave and chancel. A five-bay arcade of tall pointed arches rests on slender columns without capitals, but with a continuously moulded surround of ogee section. Between the chancel and the eastern bay of the north aisle—which appears to have been a chapel—is a four-centred archway with mouldings similar to those of the nave arcade. The nave and chancel roof dates to the 19th century and features arch-braced tie beams springing from wooden corbels to form four-centred arches, with carved bosses on the soffit of each tie beam. The aisle roof is a lean-to structure, probably also 19th-century. In the south wall of the nave at first-floor level is a doorway that formerly communicated with a rood loft.

A 18th or early 19th-century west gallery is carried on Tuscan columns and holds contemporary benches, extending over the west end of the north aisle. A staircase with column on vase balusters ascends to it from the nave. The front of the gallery bears a royal coat of arms of 1840. A 14th-century octagonal font features trefoil-headed panels around the pedestal and quatrefoil panels around the basin. Box pews of the Howe family occupy the east bay of the north aisle, with an attached brass plate commemorating the reopening of the church in 1840 following repairs and enlargement undertaken at the expense of Earl Howe.

The east window was presented to the church by Sir Walter Waller in 1840 and contains notable medieval stained glass from continental sources. The centre light displays a panel of the Presentation in the Temple, originally from the Lady Chapel of St. Denis near Paris (circa 1145). Below it are Christ taken down from the Cross and the Spies carrying grapes on their return from the promised land, both from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1243–48). Additional glass from the Sainte-Chapelle appears in the lower panels of the flanking lights. The northern light shows the People before Moses and below it St. John; the latter originally formed one scene with the bottom panel of the southern light, which depicts either the Emperor Domitian or the High Priest Aristodemus. Above this panel are Moses and the Ten Commandments, which may originally have formed one scene with its northern counterpart. Also on the south side is a kneeling woman, probably from the choir of Le Mans Cathedral (dedicated 1354), and some 14th or 15th-century glass at the top. The upper panels of the northern light contain 12th or early 13th-century glass including a saint and a woman, possibly from St. Julien de Sault. In the east bay of the north aisle is a window of 1840 by T. Willement depicting the royal coat of arms of William IV, and there is additional contemporary heraldic glass in one of the south windows of the nave.