Church of St James

Church of St James is an inter-war Anglican church built between 1931 and 1933 to designs by JE Newberry and CW Fowler. It exemplifies the restrained Perpendicular manner characteristic of this practice's church work during the period. The building suffered air raid damage in 1944 but was carefully restored by CW Fowler, with work completed in 1954. St James was one of Southwark Diocese's Twenty Five Churches, a building campaign inspired by Dr CF Garbett.

The church is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs. Internally, walls are faced in unpainted buff brick, the roof is of Columbian pine, and fittings are of oak and pine.

The plan comprises a five-bay buttressed aisled nave and two-bay chancel terminating in an apsidal buttressed sanctuary with a shallow hipped roof. Throughout, the roofs have plain oversailing eaves. A four-stage tower is attached to the south side of the chancel by a narrow external link. North and south porches stand at the west end of the nave. A two-bay chapel opens off the chancel to the north, expressed externally as a transept with a lower eastern bay. To the south, vestries occupy the lower stages of the tower, and a single-storey hipped-roofed priest's vestry is attached to the tower's east side.

The aisle windows have five cusped lights under wide cambered brick arches, while clerestory windows feature three-light panel tracery. The seven-light west window with Perpendicular tracery is flanked by three-light aisle windows. The north and south porches have pitched roofs behind gabletted parapets and windows with brick mullions. The entrances are set back under four-centred brick arches, each with a pair of panelled doors.

The tower is slightly battered with very slightly set-back buttresses and a solid parapet. It is almost entirely without embellishment except for the parapet coping, which reflects the pointed arches of the bell chamber windows. The lower stage of the south face has a four-light window with brick mullions and transoms, above which is a stair window of three narrow vertical lights. The louvred bell chamber windows are of two cusped lights beneath a hoodmould. Windows on the priest's vestry attached to the tower's east side have tall narrow openings echoing those on the tower itself.

Two-light clerestory windows to the chancel are set high in the wall above a continuous moulded brick band, drawing light into the sanctuary from a high level in a manner similar to St Hilda, Crofton Park. A tall north transept projects slightly beyond the aisle and the eastern bay of the Lady Chapel, featuring a large five-light window with panel tracery. The east window of the chapel is of three lights with a tall cusped central panel.

Inside, the unpainted buff brick walls create a simple backdrop. The arcades have quadrilateral piers with plain chamfered arrises and slender wall shafts rising to carry a simple arcade above the clerestory windows, a pattern repeated in the sanctuary. At the crossing, tall arches with multiple mouldings open onto the transept to the north and house the organ chamber to the south, while the arch to the Lady Chapel is set under a blind arcaded panel. Circulation at the east end continues through the Lady Chapel, which opens onto the sanctuary, and through a narrow ambulatory passage beneath the organ loft to the south, in a manner also similar to St Hilda, Crofton Park.

Aisle windows are set back under plain cambered arches and have red tile cills with mostly rectangular leaded lights. In contrast with the simplicity of the walls, the nave roof is scissor-braced with exposed purlins, while the aisles have two tiers of purlins, each supported by kingposts with longitudinal braces. The nave and aisle floors are of Granwood blocks.

The interior retains most of its original finishes and fittings, augmented by more recent donations such as memorial glass, statuary and Stations of the Cross. Fittings of oak and pine include doors, the pulpit and chancel seating designed by Newberry. The nave retains its unusual original folding pews. The sanctuary and south chapel opening off it are treated as one, with similar simple oak altar rails and flooring. Sanctuary gates were installed in 1938.

The reredos of filigree gilded cusped panels was designed in 1958 by JBS Comper, son of the prominent church architect Sir Ninian Comper. The Brycesson pipe organ, built in the 1820s, suffered bomb damage in 1944 and, after an interlude with a replacement organ, has been refurbished. The font, also damaged in 1944, was restored with a later cover to Fowler's designs. Set into the west wall is a fragment of sculpted stone from Southwark Cathedral.

When JE Newberry retired, he wrote that he had designed some twenty churches, mostly in the Diocese of Southwark. Many were commissioned from the Twenty Five Churches Fund, a scheme inspired by Dr CF Garbett, who was appointed Bishop of Southwark in 1919 and committed the diocese to building or enlarging twenty-five churches in the London suburbs. The project was one of several prompted by Lloyd George's 'homes fit for heroes' campaign to build new houses following the end of the First World War. The Fund closed in 1934, making St James, New Malden one of the last churches built under its auspices.

JE Newberry (1862-1950) was articled to Edward Hide before going into partnership with FH Greenaway (1869-1935) in 1904. The background of both architects reflected the rich diversity in later 19th-century church architecture. Newberry had built the mission church in Crofton Park in 1899 before designing, with Greenaway, the church of St Hilda in 1905-8, considered one of the most notable Edwardian churches in London. Their work in south London ranged from the enlargement of the mediaeval church at Plumstead in 1907-08, St Peter, Haydons Road, Wimbledon 1911-12 (which was not completed), St John the Baptist, Sutton in 1915, and finally, in 1926, under the Twenty Five Churches scheme, St Mary, Sanderstead.

After Greenaway retired in 1927, Newberry went into partnership with CW Fowler. Many of their churches are built in a reduced Perpendicular manner, which developed from the Perpendicular style favoured at the turn of the century and was regarded as uncontroversial and well-suited to the newly built suburbs. Interiors are typically pared down, with unpainted brick walls and slender arcades with simple chamfered arches. Churches by Newberry and Fowler in south London include St Paul, Furzedown (1926) and All Saints, East Sheen, completed in 1929 but repaired and reordered after a fire. Less altered is St John, Selsdon (1935-6), described by Pevsner as 'a satisfying design'. St Francis of Assisi, West Wickham (1935-6) was never completed, while St John the Divine (1939), also in New Malden, is a smaller and less imposing church than St James. In east London, St Martin's, Dagenham (1931-2) stands as an example of the restrained late Gothic-inspired work of Newberry and Fowler.