Church of St James Priory

The Church of St James Priory is a monumental building that began life as part of a Benedictine monastery founded in the second quarter of the 12th century. The nave survives from this period, while the tower was built around 1374 and raised in the 15th century. The church has undergone various phases of additions, alterations and restoration in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, with further repairs, additions and refurbishment continuing into the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Construction and Materials

The church is constructed of limestone ashlar, pennant sandstone and Brandon Hill Grit stone rubble, with limestone dressings under slate-clad roofs.

Layout

The plan consists of a nave and chancel of five bays, with multi-phase north and south aisles, a south-east tower and a south-west porch. A former vestry and store to the north-east and east respectively now serve as a café.

Exterior

West Front

The 12th-century west front has stone rubble to the lower part and coursed limestone ashlar above. It is gabled with graduated pilaster buttresses originally surmounted by pinnacles. The 19th-century Romanesque doorway, probably a replica of the original, has a segmental-arched head with lozenge decoration, a segmental inner arch, and jambs with scalloped capitals and moulded plinths. The ashlar upper part is divided into three stages with drip ledges. The lower stage has a blind arcade of intersecting arches pierced by three 12th-century round-headed windows; the middle stage is taller and slightly wider. The central stage features a heavily-weathered oculus of plate tracery dating from around 1170, with a central round light surrounded by eight smaller roundels with intersecting geometric straps, set within a zigzag patterned moulding. The upper gable contains a 19th-century slit window.

To the left are the two unequal bays of the north aisle, divided by a short buttress. The narrower, 12th-century inner bay has a round-headed window on jamb shafts and scalloped capitals with a quatrefoil above. The mid-19th-century outer bay has a central doorway with arched head and shafts with foliate capitals, a three-light window above and a trefoil-headed lancet in the gable apex.

North Elevation

The north elevation of the north aisle is Early English Gothic in style. It has five gabled bays (the west bay hidden by the Church House) and full-height, two-stage buttresses. Each bay has a three-light window with trefoil heads and three quatrefoils under a two-centred arched surround and a hoodmould. Each gable apex contains a trefoil-headed lancet. An early-21st-century single-storey link corridor has been built against the north elevation and is accessed from an inserted opening beneath the window in the easternmost bay.

At the north-east corner stands the former vestry, now a café, which is one bay wide and has been raised with an additional storey of brick; the ground floor is rendered. Its east elevation has a round-arched blocked doorway, a window with square head and to the right a further arch-headed doorway. The curving south wall has a large, early-21st-century curved window.

East End

The 12th-century monastic church originally extended further east. The lower part of the east wall, hidden by a late-20th-century flat-roofed, single-storey extension, is considered to retain the remains of a 12th-century low partition screen across the nave. The upper part, which was altered or largely rebuilt in 1846, has three neo-Romanesque windows and an oval oculus in the apex.

South Elevation and Tower

The south aisle, which was widened in the 14th century and partly rebuilt and refurbished in the 17th century, is of five bays. Its south elevation is rendered and topped by an embattled parapet. There are four 17th-century windows of four lights with trefoil heads in plate tracery under four-centred arched heads, separated by narrow buttresses. The window in the eastern bay is shorter and is set above a doorway rebuilt in 1802 with roll-moulded arched head and square-headed hoodmould with delicately-carved foliate design to the spandrels. The plank doors are 19th-century.

The clerestory has a continuous round-arched and unmoulded blind arcade carried on engaged half-shafts without bases on a plain sill. The capitals have plain chamfered impost blocks and are decorated with palmette, volute and scalloped designs; 11 are of 12th-century date and the rest are 19th-century. Part of a 12th-century corbelled eaves course also survives. The arcade is interrupted after every fifth bay by a 12th-century recessed, single-light window, except for a 19th-century restored window set within a blocked 17th-century pulpit window.

The four-stage, unbuttressed tower is square on plan, rising to a crenellated parapet from around 1900 with gargoyles and crocketted corner finials. Its lower stage has a north door with two-centred arched head and a square-headed and a single-light window in the south elevation; the second stage has a single light with trefoil head; and the third stage has a square-headed window below a clock. The upper stage has Perpendicular louvered two-light belfry windows from around 1460. The tower has an octagonal stair tower to its south-west corner which rises to a spirelet.

South-West Porch

The embattled, two-storey, south-west porch of 1802 has a south doorway with two-centred arched head and moulded surround with carvings of fruit and leaves to the spandrels. The doorcase is surmounted by a frieze of blind-arcaded, trefoil-headed panelling with a quatrefoil at each end and a moulded cornice. Above the doorway is a square-headed window of four lights with trefoil heads and a matching window in the east elevation. The west end of the south aisle has a 17th-century two-centred arched headed window of three lights. Beneath is a sill of a probable 12th-century single-light window.

Interior

A 20th-century screen encloses the west door and has a painted Royal Coat of Arms over. The nave and chancel are of five bays; the eastern bay forming the chancel. The 12th-century arcade has composite piers, though the second pier from the east on the south side is more elaborate. There are wide, scalloped capitals which carry round-headed arches with an inner roll moulding and an outer band of raised lozenge and billet decoration, retooled in the 19th century. Below the clerestory is an ornamented string course with matching decoration.

The east end has a 19th-century Romanesque blind arcade of round-arched, interlaced mouldings below an arcade of round-arched niches springing from shafts with scalloped capitals. The triple window above has jamb shafts with carved capitals and an interlaced lozenge pattern to the arches. To either side of the chancel are decorative metal screens which were originally part of the 1890s chancel screen and re-sited to their current positions.

The arch-braced wagon roof to the nave has been dated to between 1411 and 1436, and the chancel roof, which has arch-braced, common-rafter trusses, has been dated 1327-52. The roof timbers rise from carved limestone corbels.

Aisles

The north aisle is two bays wide, comprising the narrow 12th-century inner aisle and a 19th-century outer aisle, and the two are divided by an arcade which probably follows the line of the outer wall of the former. It is carried on piers of polished granite with shaft rings of unpolished marble, and richly-carved limestone capitals. An early-21st-century part-glazed partition wall has been inserted just to the north of the arcade and the outer aisle has been sub-divided into meeting rooms.

The south aisle has a mid-19th-century kingpost tie-beam roof carried on painted limestone corbels carved as grotesque heads which remain from an earlier roof. Towards the east end of the aisle, within a niche in the south wall, is a stone effigy of a recumbent male, reputedly Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who died in 1147, but it is now considered to be 13th-century and to be that of another man.

The former vestry of 1864 incorporates some 12th- and 14th-century fabric, including a narrow archway which may represent the entrance from the cloister into a passage which would have given the monks access to both the west and east parts of the priory church.

Fittings

Within the nave is a richly-carved pulpit on a composite base of four polished granite shafts and pews with doors hung on elaborate H hinges; both mid-19th-century. Towards the west end of the south aisle is a Norman-style pedestal font with a column stem with chevron moulding; its stem and base may incorporate 12th-century fabric.

Memorials

The church contains late-19th- and early-20th-century stained glass memorial windows to north and south aisles, including some by Bell of Bristol. There are numerous wall memorial tablets dating from the 16th through to the 19th centuries, many re-sited.

At the west end of the north aisle is a monument to Sir Charles Somerset, who died in 1598, former owner of part of the priory site. It has a two-tier base with kneeling figures of Somerset, his wife and their daughter at prayer above, flanked by Corinthian columns supporting a frieze surmounted by a cartouche and corner obelisks.

At the west end of the nave, the marble memorial to Henry Dighton, who died in 1673, and family members has a broken pedimented top with a shield and winged cupids above. An adjacent monument to Sir James Russell, who died in 1674, first governor of Nevis, has a marble aedicule with Corinthian columns, apron and side panels with military motifs, cannon on top and a central heraldic cartouche.

Memorials in the south aisle include a marble wall tablet to Isaac Baugh, who died in 1713, and his wife, in the form of a sarcophagus on animal feet with a bowed tablet above and surmounted by a swagged urn, set on a slate backing. A tablet to Mary Edwards, who died in 1736, is on brackets with apron and scrolled sides and a high panel with female bust in roundel and a shell. The memorial to Thomas Edwards, who died in 1727, by Michael Sidnell, has a Corinthian aedicule on brackets with broken pediment and cartouche. The memorial to Martha Noble, who died in 1754, and her husband, has a panel on brackets bearing a sarcophagus with a skull, an open pediment with a crown and open book above. There is a bust of Thomas Biddulph by E H Bailey from 1842.

A marble memorial to Joan Wood, who died in 1713, and family members, has brackets to a Corinthian aedicule with scrolled brackets supporting the sides and moulded cornice; it has been re-sited in the former organ loft, now part of the café.

In the south porch are two First World War memorials. One is a bronze plaque commemorating the Fallen of the parish of St James. The other is a sculptured stone tablet with a depiction of the crucifixion which was originally in St Peter's Church in Castle Park and was re-located to St James after St Peter's was ruined as a result of bomb damage in the Second World War.

Excluded Structures

Walsingham House, which is to the south-west and attached to the church, and the modern, early-21st-century link corridor parallel with the outer north aisle of the church are not of special architectural or historic interest and are not included in the listing.