Church Of St James

SOUTH ELMHAM ST. JAMES CHURCH LANE TM 38 SW

4/53 Church of St. James 1.9.53 - I

Parish church. C12, C13, C14 and C15. Nave, chancel, south porch, south aisle and west tower. In knapped and rubble flint throughout, with traces of old render; coursed rubble in the lower stages of the nave north wall; freestone dressings. Slate roof to nave; lead to south aisle; old plaintiles with fishscale bands to chancel. Wide stepped buttresses to the north and south walls of the nave; diagonal buttress to the east end of the aisle. Norman north doorway to the nave, its pointed arch reconstructed from 2 sections with a double billet moulding; 3 traceried windows, one 3-light and 2 2-light in Perpendicular style in the north wall. The chancel has a C13 lancet: window on the north, 2, later lancets on the south, and a C19 3-light east window with intersecting tracery. The porch exterior is largely C19; open timber roof inside; to the east of the door, a flamboyant-headed niche with a projecting bowl. South door with continuous moulding, and quarter-round mouldings to the hood-mould. C13 south aisle: 2 Y-tracery windows and one Perpendicular, 2- light, square-headed. Squat, unbuttressed west tower, its walls with some black knapped flint, and a flat parapet with a frieze of trefoil stone panels infilled with flint flushwork; a Y-tracery window to each face of the top stage. The interior of the church is considerably Victorianised, with benches, lectern, screen and chancel fittings mainly C19. The splay of a Norman slit window in the north wall of the nave. Late C13 arcade in 4 bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches; the western bay is wider and higher, with a stilted arch reminiscent of the church of All Saints, South Elmham. Square C12 font of Purbeck marble with very worn shallow blank arcading round the bowl, a large central shaft and 4 smaller corner. shafts on a fluted base with a later base below that. Tall suspended C15 font cover. Arms of George III above the tower arch. At the rear of the nave, a section of C14 rood screen, the 5 lights, divided by shafts with moulded capitals and bases, with cusped trefoil heads; boarded base. Square C17 pulpit with applied panels, guilloche and other ornament. Part of rood stairs on the south side of the chancel. Restored C13 angle piscina and remains of sedilia. Verse inscription d.1601 to William Grudgefield in the sanctuary; 3 black ledger slabs to members of the Green family, C17, in the nave. Fragments of old glass in the heads of the nave windows. On the north wall of the nave, 2 figures, a man and a woman, taken from the C15 brass on the nave floor.

Listing NGR: TM3227281216