Church of St James

Church of St James

A large and imposing Gothic Revival church on the east side of Muswell Hill Road, Muswell Hill, built in two phases: the main church constructed between 1900 and 1902 by architect J.S. Alder, with the steeple added 1909–10. A church hall by Caroe and Partners was attached to the south in 1994–95. The building is constructed of rock-faced, coursed limestone with artificial stone for the hall, under slate roofs.

The church follows a cruciform plan with a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a south-west porch, north-west steeple, north transept and chapel, south vestry and organ chamber, with the church hall attached to the south. (Liturgical orientations are used here; the church is oriented south-east.)

The defining feature is the tall, landmark north-west steeple, which draws inspiration from medieval great steeples such as those of Lincolnshire and incorporates 14th-century Gothic details. The tower rises through five storeys of unequal heights with set-back buttresses rising to the parapets. The short ground stage has a north-facing arched entrance serving as a porch. The belfry stage features very tall paired, louvred two-light openings on each face, with an embattled parapet above topped by octagonal pinnacles at the corners. The spire rises behind these pinnacles, decorated with square pinnacles at its base, angled ribs, and a single tier of lucarnes placed low down.

The west front of the nave displays a very large recessed seven-light window combining Perpendicular and Decorated tracery, with a central arched doorway below flanked by pairs of two-light windows. At the south-west corner of the nave stands a large octagonal embattled turret crowned with a spirelet. The aisles are lean-to structures of five bays, divided by buttresses, with most windows being wide four-light openings under four-centred heads with Perpendicular tracery. The clerestory contains two lights per bay under depressed heads. A transept with a large four-light Perpendicular window projects from the west part of the chancel, with the chancel itself set beneath its own gable to the east. The large east window, matching the west window, has seven lights combining both Decorated and Perpendicular elements. The north-east and south-east corners of the chancel are slightly canted. The hall connects to the church via a glazed link and features a token Gothic Y-tracery window on its west front.

The interior is light and spacious with bare stone facing. There is minimal division between nave and chancel, which are of equal width. The six bays of the nave have quatrefoil piers with rolls in the angles, clustered demi-octagonal capitals and bases, and multiple mouldings in the arch heads. The main roof is a post-Second World War replacement by Caroe and Partners, featuring arch-brace trusses with a canted ceiling between them divided into rectangular panels by ribs, and stone wall-shafts rising from the arch valleys to the base of the arch-braces.

The principal furnishings include good, simply detailed panelled stalls typical of early 20th-century church fittings. Bench seating has been removed from the nave and the floor carpeted, though seating remains in the aisles. An excellent organ case by Caroe and Partners on the south side of the chancel is divided into five compartments and decorated with discreet Gothic tracery. Triple sedilia with substantial cusped, gabled and crocketed canopies occupy the sanctuary, which has a mosaic floor. An unusually detailed hexagonal font bears a tall attached panel with a standing image of Christ. Two First World War memorial windows by Morris and Co., each of two lights (subsequently altered after 1945), are present. A third window in the second bay from the west in the south aisle is signed AGG and dated 1937. Considerable stained glass was destroyed during the Second World War.

The present building replaced an earlier modest white-brick church of 1840–41 designed by S. Angell. The architect John Samuel Alder (1848–1919) was articled in 1867 to the Hereford and Malvern practice Haddon Bros, where he remained as an assistant until 1872, when he became assistant to Frederick Preedy and subsequently to Robert Curwen. He established independent practice in London in 1886 and developed a substantial church architecture practice, primarily in London with some work in the Home Counties. The present church, according to Cherry and Pevsner, represents work that is 'old-fashioned but accomplished...of a size and dignity appropriate to the burgeoning suburb.'