Church Of St James

Church of St James, Ruscombe

This is a parish church of mixed date. The chancel dates from the 12th century and is built of flint with stone dressings. The nave and tower were almost entirely rebuilt in 1638, constructed in brick in a late phase of Gothic style. The brick work includes moulded door and window jambs and tracery, with a moulded brick cornice to the nave. The roofs are old tile with gabled construction. The interior was restored in 1859-60 and 1870-80, when the north organ chamber was added.

The west tower is built on a plinth with stone capping. It rises in three stages with diagonal buttresses of three stages at the angles, stopping midway up the walls of the bell chamber. String courses run at the ringing stage and bell chamber levels, with a small moulded brick cornice below an embattled parapet topped with stone coping. The south wall of the ground stage contains a three-light window. The west wall has a doorway of two continuous chamfered orders, the inner four-centred and the outer square, with a stone lintel over topped by a keystone. The ringing chamber's west wall holds a window of two pointed lights beneath a pointed head. Each wall of the bell chamber has an elliptical-headed window with a moulded label of three acutely pointed lights, each with an elliptical sub-head. An iron weather vane crowns the south-west corner, flag-shaped with a crown between the letters C.R. and the date 1639. A clock is mounted on the west face.

The nave has three north windows, each of three lights with three-centred heads, the mullions carried up and mitering with the mouldings of the triangular main head above which runs a chamfered label. Between the two westernmost windows is a blocked four-centred doorway with a segmental rear arch. The south wall has three similar windows. Opposite the blocked doorway is a pointed doorway with chamfered jambs and head. On either side of the easternmost of these windows is a small round-headed recess with a moulded label.

The porch on the south wall is gabled with stone coping and moulded brick kneelers against which the small cornices supporting the eaves stop. The doorway head is semi-circular with a moulded archivolt, flat keystones and projecting impost mouldings, contained within a square label. Both side walls of the porch have semi-circular lights with moulded labels. The south doorway of the nave and the outer doorway of the porch retain their original nail-studded doors.

The chancel has two small lancet windows on the east wall with semi-circular rear arches, splayed inner jambs and external chamfers. A similar window appears on the north wall. The south wall holds two windows: the first is a small 19th-century one of two pointed lights; the second is a small original lancet. At the west end of the south wall is part of the pointed head of a blocked priest's doorway, over which is a relieving arch of Roman bricks. On the second brick of this arch is a medieval mass clock.

The interior contains a three-bay trussed rafter roof to the nave. The chancel has an open 14th-century roof of collared rafters supported by arched braces; the braces to the central pair of rafters and the wall plate are moulded. The wall between the chancel and nave roofs is carried on a large oak rood beam. The 17th-century tympanum has the Commandments painted on the original plaster. The jambs of the east windows of the chancel preserve some 13th-century wall paintings.

The church contains an early 17th-century hexagonal wooden pulpit with an elaborate twelve-sided sounding board (the lower part is 19th-century). At the west end of the nave are two 17th-century carved oak pews.

Monuments include a stone aedicule panel with central cartouche to Gwyn (1705) on the south wall of the chancel, and a similar panel to John Aldworth (1710) and his wife Mary. On the west wall of the nave over the door to the tower is a projecting central panel with side pilasters set back and side scrolls and carved drops, commemorating Letitia, first wife of Reginald Fellows, citizen of London (died 1706) and Catherine his second wife (died 1716). On the north wall of the nave is a monument to James Eyre, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Lord Chief Justice (1799), featuring a black pyramidal background to a broken column and figure of Justice, sculpted by R. Westmacott. To the east of this is an aedicule panel with Doric pilasters to Walter Knight (1771).