Church Of St James The Less

Church of St James the Less

Anglican Parish Church. Built in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the church underwent substantial restoration dated 1879 over the north door, carried out by Sir T. G. Jackson. The chancel was restored around 1930, including work by F. C. Eden. The building is constructed of rubble with freestone dressings, quoins and chequers, with double roman tile roofs featuring raised, coped verges and saddle stones. The plan comprises a west tower, nave, north porch, chancel, south chapel and aisle, executed predominantly in the Perpendicular style.

The west tower is square and three-staged, set on a plinth with large, diagonal, weathered buttresses. Those to the north feature ogee-headed image niches; the north-east buttress has a canopy and finials, whilst the north-west contains a statue of St James. At the south, a half-hexagon stair tower rises to the third stage. The first stage has a small pointed west door below a defaced stellate hood, above which is a restored 3-light window with crude face hood stops. On either side is a trefoil-headed blank arcade with shafts culminating in figures, faces, mainly blank shields and 2 plain crosses. This motif continues north and south where shafts stand on face corbels, with some chequers at this stage. The second stage has slit lights to east and west, and below that to the west is a single cusped light. To the north, a similar light is flanked by two image niches with cusped nodding canopies below a plain clock. The third stage has one tall transmullioned, barely pointed 2-light window per side, with cusped heads and blank tracery below the transom, pierced shutters above, and gargoyles below the parapet with trefoil-headed panels. At the corners, buttresses are surmounted by shafts with crocketed finials; to the north is a figure of a knight.

The 3-bay nave has one clerestorey window per bay, each of 3 cusped lights under a square head just below eaves, which have a coved cornice and moulded rafter ends. To the north is a 4-light square-headed window flanked by a polygonal rood stair turret with a single light and a buttress, these all standing to the east of the north porch. The north porch was rebuilt in 1879 with banded masonry, in two storeys, gabled and buttressed with embattled parapet and finials. It has a 4-light window above a frieze of cusped panels above a moulded, pointed doorway, a single quatrefoil light to the east, and a polygonal stair turret to the west.

The gabled chancel has two 3-light square-headed windows to the north and a 3-light pointed east window surmounted by a cross finial. The gabled south chapel has a similar east window with cruder tracery and 2 south windows as in the chancel, set on a cill string which rises in the position of a former priest's door. The buttressed south aisle has 2 similar but taller windows and a moulded, pointed door, with a tall pointed 3-light window at the west. The east gable is surmounted by an octagonal, panelled shaft, and a sundial dated 166- is positioned above the west buttress.

Interior

The tall, heavy tower arch features very large wave and hollow mouldings below fine grotesque capitals, above which 2 hollow mouldings flank a heavy chamfer. A fan vault rises from figurative corbels to the circular bell opening. A narrow entrance leads to a tiny north chamber, reputed to be a former lock-up. The nave has a simple wagon roof and shows both the north porch entrance and rood stair, with an upper rood niche at the south. The north porch contains a moulded doorway, a plank and batten studded door, and a stoup on a shaft. A carved fragment, possibly of Saxon origin, is set in the door reveal.

A low, unadorned chancel arch leads to the chancel, which contains features from two restoration periods. The wagon roof has bosses and an embattled wall plate dating from the 1930s, as does the reredos flanked by canopied image niches by F. C. Eden. The mosaic flooring dates from 1879. A 3-bay Tudor arch arcade leads to the south chapel, which has a simple, original wagon roof with bosses and embattled wall plate, and an inserted painted timber screen. An arch as at the chancel leads to the south aisle with a 3-bay arcade on octagonal shafts and a plain wagon roof on stone corbels, rebuilt in the 1950s. Remains of a piscina are at the south-east, and a sacristy has been inserted in the south-west corner.

Fittings include good benches, substantially of the 15th and 16th centuries with heavy linenfold ends, some with dado panels and some being copies. A Jacobean pulpit with tester has been repositioned and restored; it is octagonal with arched panels, and the tester features strapwork and finials. The rear panel reads: ROBERT.HO/OPPER. PAR/SON. THOMAS/LEG. AND/MIGHILL. TU/CK. CHURCH/WARDINS./ANNO.1624. A 2-tier brass chandelier reads: GILES LORINGE WILLIAM PAYNE CHURCH WARDENS 1725.

Memorials are distributed throughout the church. The south chapel contains 3 incised stones to the Poyntz family, 2 recumbent figures (a knight and a lady), and a 16th-century chest tomb with canopy and finals flanking a pierced, ashlared frieze, with 3 armorial bearings at the rear. In the chancel are a plain Jacobean table tomb and a good tablet with crude Tuscan columns carrying an entablature below a swan-neck pediment and arms to Machin, dated 1716, and a carved and painted table to Rev. Thomas Shute and his wife, dated 1728. The south aisle has a small tablet with momento mori to John Trevitt, dated 1686, and another tablet similar in style to that in the chancel, to Wither, dated 1720. Various 19th-century marble tablets on slate grounds include one of 1830 by O. Greenway and one by J. Thomas of Bristol.

The north-east window of the chancel contains medieval glass fragments.