Church Of St James

Church of St James

A substantial parish church on the north side of Radley Church Road, the Church of St James demonstrates construction and alteration across four centuries. The building contains a 13th-century chancel (remodeled around 1330), 15th-century tower and fenestration, and underwent restoration in 1902.

The exterior is constructed of uncoursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, with the east wall partly roughcast. The tower is ashlar-built. Roofs are finished in artificial stone slate with gables. The plan comprises a chancel and nave with a south aisle, south transept, and west tower. The north aisle and transept were destroyed during the 1640s in the English Civil War, when Radley served as a Royalist outpost of Oxford.

The chancel's east wall features a fine 15th-century Perpendicular window. Early 14th-century angle buttresses carry crocketted pinnacles. A fleuron frieze and crenellated parapet run across the two-bay side walls, which contain 15th-century three-light cinquefoil-headed windows. A 19th-century north door and 17th-century burial-chamber are attached to the south.

The north wall of the nave is a two-bay section with reset 15th-century two- and three-light windows flanking an offset buttress. The south transept contains Y-tracery windows of around 1902. The nave retains a much-restored 15th-century three-light window, an offset buttress, and a 15th-century south doorway fitted with a 17th-century studded and ribbed door inscribed "Rodericus Loid 1656". A late 19th-century timber porch stands before this door. The south aisle displays a 15th-century two-light window with restored label-mould at its west end.

The 15th-century west tower features a large Tudor-arched two-light window above a two-centred doorway with quatrefoil spandrels. Similar 15th-century windows light the belfry, with single-light windows adjoining a sundial to the south. A crenellated parapet with gargoyles at the corners completes the tower.

Interior fittings are exceptionally fine. A painted reredos carved in 1909 dominates the chancel. An 18th-century communion rail stands before the altar. Very fine early 17th-century misericords and stalls, with six-bay crocketted and panelled canopies, were purchased from Cologne around 1847. The benches feature large 17th-century poppy heads comparable to those in Sunningwell Church. The chancel arch is a late 19th-century rebuilding. A late 19th-century stone pulpit displays a very fine three-bay late Gothic canopy with angel pendants to the front and linenfold and curvilinear-traceried panels to the back.

A late 19th-century eagle lectern, 18th-century pews (much restored), and a fine Norman drum font supported on four individually-carved colonettes with scalloped capitals survive. An early 19th-century wrought-iron lantern-bracket and 20th-century gallery occupy the west end. The south transept contains a 13th-century piscina and 17th-century collar-truss roof.

The unusual four-bay south arcade is constructed with stop-chamfered oak posts supporting a restored arcade plate with hollow-chamfered lateral bracing. A king-post roof dates to around 1902. A 15th-century arch marks the transition to the west tower.

Monuments include an important work by Nicholas Stone, erected in the chancel for Sir William Stonhouse (died 1631) and his son (died 1632). The monument features recumbent effigies of William and his wife upon a chest tomb with their children carved below, and the son kneeling with hands clasped in prayer over a skull on the right. The chest tomb is framed by an open pediment with heraldic achievement and a shallow back-arch framing an inscription panel. Wall tablets to Sir William Bowyer (died 1893) and Admiral Sir George Bowyer by F. Nollekens feature a garlanded oval inscription and naval symbols (compass, cannon, anchor, ramrod) arranged beneath a draped flag. An oval tablet to his son, Lieutenant Colonel William Bowyer (died 1808 on service in Barbados), also appears in the chancel. The south aisle contains an unusual triptych memorial with a central urn by J. Lock of Abingdon, erected for the Davis family around 1822.

Stained glass in the east window includes early 16th-century French or Flemish glass, with a large early 16th-century portrait in the west window. Sixteenth-century heraldic glass appears throughout the building, re-arranged and skillfully supplemented by Thomas Willement around 1840. Tradition holds that the canopy surmounting the pulpit formerly sheltered the Speaker's Chair, brought here from Parliament by Speaker William Lenthall in the 1630s.

The south transept windows date to 1902, replacing 15th-century examples in the restoration of that year, following the Civil War losses of the previous centuries.