Church Of St James

The Church of St James is a parish church built in 1836, with repairs and alterations made in 1875 and the chancel added in 1889. The 1875 work was carried out by J Tulloch and T H Wyatt. The church features Flemish bond brickwork, with some flared headers and ashlar dressings, and has a slate roof with stone gable copings and an ashlar bell-cote on the west side.

The layout includes a nave, chancel, and a transeptal vestry with an organ chamber. The nave has brick lancet windows separated by weathered buttresses, a pointed, moulded doorway with a returned label and a plank door, and a pointed window in a moulded, trefoiled recess with a label above. The chancel and transepts have three-light windows under straight heads with curvilinear tracery, and the east window has five lights under a pointed head, each light separated by an ashlar strip. The gables are roughcast, and there are flat buttresses.

Inside, the church features a pointed, moulded chancel arch that dies into jambs with subsidiary pointed arches on either side, pointed transept arches of two chamfered orders, a tie beam roof in the nave, and a king and queen post roof in the chancel. The interior includes 19th-century glass, monuments, and an octagonal stone font on an octagonal plinth. Notably, there is an early 17th-century octagonal timber pulpit from Wimborne Minster Church, featuring a moulded arcade and entablature supported by freestanding Corinthian columns. Other interior features are from the 19th century. The chancel displays a curiously modernistic design for its time.