Roman Catholic Church Of St James

A Roman Catholic church of considerable historical and architectural interest, now disused. The building was constructed in 1869–70, but incorporates a substantial amount of medieval material, principally from around 1400. The architect is uncertain but was probably Edward Welby Pugin, who also designed the adjoining convent. It is built of squared, coursed, near ashlar buff and pink sandstone—mostly reused medieval stonework—with a tiled roof. The design is in the Early Perpendicular style with main windows transitional from Late Decorated.

The church is a single-cell building oriented north-south with an entrance porch on the north gable. The west wall is attached to the convent, which is separately listed.

Exterior

The north elevation features a lean-to porch with the door facing east and diagonal corner buttresses. The gable contains a two-light Decorated window with cusped heads to the lights and a quatrefoil in the arched head, with a dripmould and carved stops—this window appears medieval. The east end has a Perpendicular doorway with hollow chamfer surround and a 15th-century panelled door with studs. The west end, facing the convent, has a two-light window with flat head and cusped lights to the individual panes. This window type is repeated in the main gable facing north above the entrance, where a large window has been constructed from two such two-light windows making four lights, with a third two-light window above—all appearing medieval. The gable is coped with a gable cross.

The east elevation has four tall windows of unequal spacing. These are pointed-arched windows, each with two cinquefoil-headed lights and an elongated sexfoil above, with continuous dripmould. All appear medieval. The south gable elevation has a three-light window with cusped head. A cross base sits at the gable apex. The west elevation adjoining the convent is featureless except for the porch window already described.

Interior

The interior is a single cell with a small chancel and a large arched recess on the west wall opening into the convent building. The porch has a timber vaulted roof. The chapel displays two distinct roofs. The chancel has a three-bay early 15th-century oak roof with two tiers of cusped windbraces. The north end has a plain, probably 16th-century roof of fourteen closely set arch-braced collar trusses. Window reveals nearly all demonstrate medieval origin. A 15th-century type timber chancel screen is now placed on either side of the entrance.

A fine stone altar and reredos of 1869, probably by Edward Welby Pugin, features statues under niches of St Francis de Sales, St Jean Frances de Chantal, St Teresa, St Anne, and one other saint. The reredos has six niches with angels; the central niche formerly contained the tabernacle and is now vandalised. Two fixed piscinas are set in the east wall.

Various memorials commemorate the Phillips family, including two memorial brasses probably by Hardman and Co. of Birmingham. Two standing marble figures survive: a mourning angel with a scroll on a bracket beneath a nodding arch in an elaborate 14th-century style stone niche, and another in a timber niche. These commemorate Robert Biddulph Phillips (died 1864), his wife (died 1852), and his daughter Mary Anne (died 1858), all buried in the chapel. The south window contains glass by Hardman and Co., notable for good figure drawing and bright Victorian colours.

History and Significance

The chapel's history is complex. The building, or parts of it, originally stood at Old Longworth, where it served as the private chapel of the manor house. It is reported to have been built around 1390, and surviving features suggest a date of around then or slightly later. After the Reformation, the chapel fell into disuse and was eventually degraded to agricultural purposes, including cider making. A drawing of 1792 shows it as one section of a partly timber-framed range, surviving apparently unchanged until the mid-19th century.

Robert Biddulph Phillips, the owner at that time, converted to Catholicism and restored the chapel in 1851; before and after photographs of this phase survive. In 1863 he founded the Convent of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge at Bartestree for his daughter. Phillips died in 1864 and was buried in his chapel at Longworth, but his will expressed a determination to move the chapel next to the convent, which was achieved in 1869–70.

The photographs clearly show that the chapel as reconstructed differs significantly from its original form. The north wall of the old chapel originally contained only two of the two-light windows; the other two must come from the south wall, explaining why the early 15th-century roof covers only part of the present church—the second roof being presumably a domestic one from Longworth. The east wall appears as now in the photographs, but the origin of other apparently medieval windows remains uncertain, though they likely come from the demolished building at Old Longworth.

The present building is thus not a medieval building carefully dismantled and re-erected on a new site, but a Victorian interpretation of a medieval building using high-quality medieval material. This radical redesign, probably by Edward Welby Pugin, demonstrates the confidence of better Victorian architects in their approach both to their own work and to medieval buildings. The church merits Grade II* for this unusual quality, together with its historic interest as a chapel used exclusively for Roman Catholic worship over a period of approximately six hundred years.