Church Of St James And St Anne

Church of St James and St Anne, Alfington

This church was designed by William Butterfield in 1849 and is built of roughcast over brick with clay tile roofs. The vestry and belfry were added by Butterfield in 1879-83. The building was originally intended to be temporary, hence its modest structure and inexpensive materials, yet Butterfield was chosen as architect due to his close working relationship with the influential local Coleridge family, whom he was also assisting with the restoration of St Mary's in Ottery St Mary.

The church plan comprises a nave and chancel in one, a south-west porch, and a north-east vestry. The body is a simple four-bay rectangular structure with roughcast walls demarcated by buttresses. The windows throughout are plain lancets: the east window is formed of three graded lancets, while the west window consists of a pair of lancets. A notable and unusual feature is the bell-turret, a plain rendered rectangular box (longer east-west than north-south) supported by corbelling either side of a west buttress. The nave has a plain south-west porch.

The interior has plastered and whitened walls with no chancel arch separating the nave from the chancel. The roof structure features arch braces to a collar supporting a king post, reinforced with iron ties.

The church is plainly furnished with low bench seating of the kind favoured by Butterfield and plain open stalls. Commandment boards flank the pair of west windows. The font is a sturdy octagonal piece set on a low square base. On the north wall is a marble monument to John Duke Coleridge (died 1894), first Baron Coleridge and Lord Chief Justice of England, with marble shafts and a crocketed ogee head. At the west end stands another wall monument to John Coleridge Patteson (died 1871), described as the first missionary bishop amongst the Melanesia Islands and martyred there. This monument displays Butterfield's characteristic muscular style with polychrome cusping and a vigorous crocketed surround topped by a circular cross. The east window was designed by A W N Pugin and made by Hardman and Co of Birmingham for John Duke Coleridge; it was installed in 1852 and cost £35.

To the east of the church is a lychgate of 1897 with brick side walls and timber superstructure. South of the church stands a large angular block forming a parsonage and school, also by Butterfield, dating from 1850.

William Butterfield (1829-99) is recognised as one of the greatest 19th-century church architects. His career flourished from the mid-1840s when the influential Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society took him up as one of their favourite architects. In the early 1850s he was responsible for the great church of All Saints, Margaret Street in London, which broke new ground in Victorian church-building through its use of brick facing and extensive polychromy. Butterfield had astonishing fertility of invention and his work often displays striking originality through intriguing uses of geometry and bold use of colour. Apart from All Saints, his best-known work is probably Keble College, Oxford. A devout High Churchman, his clients were usually of similar leanings.