Church Of St Mary And St James

The Church of St Mary and St James is a parish church, largely dating from the 15th century. The chancel was rebuilt in the 1827, and the church underwent restoration in 1895 and during the early 20th century. The original work was commissioned for the de Bryan family. The church is constructed of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings, and has stone slate roofs over the nave and north aisle, a tiled roof to the chancel, and lead roofs elsewhere.

The church’s plan incorporates a chancel, a south chapel, a nave, north and south aisles, a west tower, and a south porch. The west tower rises in four stages and includes a rectangular vice turret to the north-east, and is divided by six string courses with diagonal buttresses. The first stage has a doorway with a two-centred arch and continuously moulded jambs within a square surround. The second stage features a four-light window with cinqufoiled panelled tracery under a two-centred arch, with a continuous label. Flanking this window are two ogee-headed cinqufoiled niches topped with crocketed finials. The third stage has a clock facing west, and the fourth stage contains four windows of two trefoiled lights, mullioned and transomed with panelled tracery and two-centred arches. An embattled parapet is finished with crocketted finials at the corners.

The south facade has two two-light windows with cinqufoiled cusping and panelled tracery, followed by two flat-pointed windows of two cinqufoiled lights, also with labels. A two-centred doorway with continuously moulded jambs is positioned to the right. The south chancel window is of two cinqufoiled lights with a quatrefoil, pointed moulded head and label. The south aisle and chapel have embattled parapets and string courses with gargoyles. The embattled south porch features a two-centred doorway with continuously moulded jambs and a label, with a string course and gargoyles. The east window of the chancel has three cinqufoiled lights under a two-centred arch with a label, bearing head stops.

Internally, there are four-bay north and south nave arcades with moulded two-centred arches, and a two-centred, moulded chancel arch. The tower arch has blind panelled tracery to its archivolt. A four-centred moulded chapel arch is also present. The chancel contains a 15th-century piscina with reset window tracery and a table resting on a carved head corbel. The north aisle has canopied niches with figures depicting the Annunciation, created by Sir Charles Nicholson in 1919, alongside a reconstructed sedilia and a Calvary. Painted inscriptions are visible on the spandrals of the south aisle. A pulpit, dated 1782, was crafted by Ben Lidford. Two finely carved 'decorated' corbels are reset within the south chapel. The nave and north aisle retain 15th-century wagon roofs. The south aisle chapel and porch have flat roofs with moulded beams, while the chancel has a 19th-century ribbed plaster barrel-vault roof. A late 12th-century octagonal font, constructed from Purbeck marble with blind panels on a cylindrical pedestal surrounded by eight shafts on an octagonal base, is also present.