Church Of St James

Church of St James, Finchampstead

A parish church of Grade I importance, dating principally from the 12th century with substantial alterations and extensions spanning the 14th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The building combines painted stucco with stone window dressings, a brick tower, and an old tile roof. It comprises an apsidal chancel, a three-bay nave, a three-bay north chapel, a north porch, and a west tower.

The 12th-century core survives in the chancel and nave. From this period remain two round-headed windows in the north wall of the nave, an aumbry on the same wall to the right of the entrance, a pillar piscina with fluted capital and octagonal stem on the right side of the chancel apse, and a limestone font with a fine bowl featuring sloping sides enriched with spiral roll and bead ornament. The font stem and base are 19th-century replacements.

The north chapel shows a date and inscription "T1590H" on the outside of the stone lintel over the old north door. It is approached from the chancel through a four-centred arched opening of two chamfered orders with flattened semi-octagonal responds with plain capitals and bases. The chapel belongs to more than one period. A late 14th-century window contains two ogee trefoiled lights under a square head; the east window is 15th-century with three similar lights and head. The roof features two large moulded tie beams, a similar tie at a higher level with two large curved braces supporting the purlins, and part of a large moulded wall plate with a roll mould and chamfer with run-out stops. An arcade of two bays opens from the nave to the chapel; the eastern and narrower bay with respond and middle pillar is 19th-century, while the other bay resembles the chancel arch, which was widened in the 15th century and has semi-octagonal jambs with moulded capitals and bases.

The chancel features a flat ribbed timber roof with foliated bosses adjoining the apse. The nave roof is of vaulted timber with 15th-century moulded tie beams with moulded bases, two of which are missing on the south side. The east window of the nave is 19th-century; the two south windows are 14th-century, each with four trefoiled ogee-headed lights with semi-quatrefoils over, beneath a square head. The north doorway is probably a 15th-century insertion, consisting of a single hollow chamfered order with a two-centred arch; the gabled porch is 19th-century.

The pulpit is 19th-century but incorporates pieces of 15th-century tracery and cresting.

The tower is dated 1720, as marked by a panel on the north side. It is of three stages with a moulded plinth, strings, angled corner buttresses, and a plain parapet with pyramidal finials at the corners. The belfry windows have brick lattice tracery. A 15th-century stone window of two ogee trefoiled lights appears on the west face, below which is a brick doorway with a door contemporary with the tower, set beneath a round arched head.

Two panelled chests are preserved in the chancel. One has a sloping lid inscribed "RH 1614", and the other is smaller with initials and date set with nails reading "BL 1690 IT".

The church contains several monuments of historical interest. In the north chapel stands an altar tomb with a black marble top to Richard Palmer of East Court, died 1670. On the north side of the chancel arch is a bronze tablet to Henry Hinde, Lord of the Manor of Finchampstead East Court, who died in 1580. The south wall of the nave bears a small brass to Elizabeth Blighe, 1635, and above it another small brass depicting a lady and her child richly dressed. In the chancel floor is a black slab with two small brass inscriptions: the upper commemorates Richard Marsh, a citizen and grocer of London who died in 1613; the lower is inscribed with a set of laudatory verses in Latin.

The church underwent restoration in 1858 and again in 1914. It stands high on a mound with fine views to the south from the churchyard.