Church Of St James

Church of St James

This is a church of medieval date, constructed over the 12th to 15th centuries, with significant Victorian restoration work. Built of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and marlstone ashlar, with lead roofs, it comprises a chancel, nave, north aisle, south chapel, west tower and north porch.

The chancel was restored in 1854 and again in 1891 by J.D. Sedding. It contains a 3-light 19th-century east window with reticulated tracery, but retains 14th-century square-headed windows to north and south of 2 lights with flowing tracery (the lower part of the southern window is blocked), and a 2-light late 13th-century window with a quatrefoil in the head and a traceried low-side window, now partly blocked.

The south chapel is a 3-bay structure overlapping the chancel and nave, with stepped buttresses and 15th to early 16th-century windows featuring depressed arches and Perpendicular drop tracery. The 4-light east window is blocked below an inserted transom, and the 2 easternmost windows facing south were altered in the 16th century, cutting off most of the tracery and substituting square heads with a linked label mould (the middle window is now blocked). A small 16th-century Tudor-arched doorway with recessed spandrels and a label mould with head stops is an insertion, possibly brought from the ruined manor house. The south wall contains a 2-light 15th-century clerestory window above a blocked plain Romanesque doorway, and to the extreme west a very tall transomed 3-light 15th-century window with drop tracery below a depressed arch. Three more clerestory windows above the south chapel are matched by similar windows in the north clerestory.

The north aisle has a plain pointed early 13th-century doorway with carved headstops and an ancient plank door, and square-headed 15th-century windows except for an arched 3-light window with 14th-century reticulated tracery and a 2-light 16th-century window, both facing north.

The 14th-century north porch is constructed in marlstone ashlar with a continuously-moulded outer arch and small ogee-headed side windows.

The nave, north aisle and south chapel have matching limestone-ashlar parapets with bold crenellation.

The 14th-century marlstone-ashlar tower is in 3 stages with diagonal buttresses containing canopied image niches. Above the stage openings runs a moulded string linking 8 winged gargoyles, from which rise panelled pinnacles, each with gablets and foliated finials. The crenellated parapet crowns the structure. The west face includes a 2-light window with blind tracery above a doorway with deep continuous mouldings containing an old plank double door with the remains of ancient hinges. The second stage has trefoil-head lancets and blind quatrefoils to south and west, but to the north is a larger recess containing a limestone canopied carving of the Crucifixion with attendant figures. The top stage has 2-light bell-chamber openings with transoms and Y-tracery.

The interior of the chancel features a 16th-century style roof of around 1850 with a pierced frieze, but retains a 3-seat 14th-century sedilia with mouchettes in the tracery, and a remarkable carved stone reredos of the Last Supper with each figure below an ogee canopy, probably of around 1400. A plain plastered arch opening to the south chapel retains one shaft of its 15th-century predecessor. The 19th-century chancel arch consists of 2 chamfered orders dying into the walls.

The 4-bay north arcade has round Transitional columns with pointed arches of 2 chamfered orders; the responds are probably 14th-century, as is the south arcade of 2 arches with continuous mouldings. The low tower arch has 3 chamfered orders. There are two 14th-century tomb recesses in the north aisle and a small 15th to early 16th-century piscina in the south chapel.

The 15th-century nave roof features moulded timbers rising from carved corbels; a similar roof exists in the north aisle. The south chapel roof is 15th-century in style but probably 19th-century in execution.

A fine 15th-century chancel screen has a drop-traceried arcade above a pierced frieze, though the lower panels of 1891 are by J.D. Sedding. A 15th-century screen in the south arcade features traceried panels and 2 matching doors; the western section probably originally returned across the chapel. A late 16th-century panelled screen on the south side of the chancel has a row of Doric columns below a cornice.

Other fittings include two 13th to 14th-century bench ends in the chancel, a number of 16th-century bench pews at the rear of the nave with some traceried and linenfold panels, some early 18th-century box pews, a panelled pulpit of 1764 on 6 turned legs, a tower screen of around 1900 by Thomas Garner, and an unusual small 14th-century font.

Stained glass includes some 17th-century armorial quarries and a window of 1892 by Christopher Whall in the north aisle, and a 19th-century east window in the chancel. The south chapel contains some patterned medieval floor tiles.

Monuments in the nave include a mid 17th-century wall tablet to Mary and William Mynne, several 17th-century ledgers, and a large medieval floor slab with an incised foliated cross.

The Fermor monuments in the south chapel are particularly notable. They include a large plain tomb chest with brasses to William and Elizabeth Fermor (circa 1552), an elaborate alabaster chest with effigies of Thomas and Brigitta Fermor (circa 1580) by Richard and Gabriel Roilly of Burton-on-Trent, and 2 large canopied monuments with Classical columns, obelisks, cartouches of arms and strapwork decoration to John Fermor (died 1625) and Richard Fermor (died 1642/3), whose effigies they contain. There are also several 17th to early 18th-century ledgers, 3 early 19th-century memorials with reliefs of weeping figures, and 3 hatchments. An undated wall monument to James and Elizabeth Smith is probably of around 1600.

The Fermors were a noted Recusant family who moved from Somerton to Tusmore in 1625.