Church of St. James

Church of St. James

A parish church of mostly 15th and early 16th-century date, substantially renovated in the 1840s. The building is constructed of exposed snecked local mudstone, with the tower and north side of the chancel in roughcast. Original granite architectural detail was replaced with Bathstone in the 19th century. The roofs are slate.

The church comprises a nave and chancel, south aisle and former Radford Chapel under a parallel roof, a west tower, south porch, and a 19th-century vestry set in the angle between the east end of the aisle and the chancel. The architectural style is predominantly Perpendicular.

The tall and elegant west tower is roughcast with mostly original early 16th-century granite dressings. It is three stages high with diagonal buttresses, continuous string courses, and an embattled parapet with corner crocketted pinnacles. One pinnacle is surmounted by a 19th-century brass weathercock. The upper stage has square-headed two-light belfry windows with cinquefoil-headed lights and hoodmoulds. Below these are 19th-century round clock faces with Roman numerals. The north side has tiny slit windows serving the internal newel stair. On the west side both the doorway and window above have almost round-arched heads with hoodmoulds. The doorway has a moulded surround and roll stops enriched with side scrolls. The window is three-light with replacement Perpendicular tracery.

The rest of the church was renovated in the 19th century. Both gable ends of the south aisle and the east end of the chancel have 19th-century kneelers and coping, with the chancel surmounted by a floriated cross. The west end of the south aisle has a replacement three-light arch-headed window with Perpendicular tracery. The south side of the aisle includes four similar windows between diagonal buttresses, interrupted by a porch left of centre. All these windows retain original late 15th- to early 16th-century granite mullions and tracery. A chamfered granite plinth and soffit-chamfered granite wall plate run under the eaves.

The porch is a fine early 16th-century structure with diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet. The coping is moulded. A band of granite ashlar above the plinth and the entire granite ashlar parapet are carved with a series of sunken square panels containing cusped, mostly quatrefoil decoration. The outer arch is four-centred with a moulded soffit and clustered nook shafts with moulded capitals and base. It contains early 18th-century panelled oak double doors that together make a semi-circular head filled with turned balusters, with the top given a crest of wrought iron spikes and fleur-de-lys.

The right (east) side of the porch and south side of the aisle have slate memorial stones bolted to the walls. High in the wall at the right end is an undated slate sundial with an iron pointer inscribed 'Lat. N. 50°', probably early 19th-century. The east end of the aisle has a four-light granite Perpendicular window similar in style to those on the south. The protruding south side of the chancel has a simple arch-headed granite three-light window with intersecting tracery, probably 19th-century and apparently replacing a larger window. The low 19th-century vestry is built in Tudor Gothic style with an embattled parapet and square-headed lights. An elliptical arch-headed doorway in the west side marks where the vestry projects slightly from the south aisle. The east end of the chancel has a 19th-century replacement three-light window with Decorated-style tracery.

The north front to the nave and chancel has four windows. At the left end, the chancel has a 16th-century square-headed three-light window with round-headed lights, sunken spandrels and a moulded hood. A disused rood stair turret projects square from the break between nave and chancel. The nave has three replacement three-light Perpendicular windows similar to those in the aisle.

Interior

The porch has a 20th-century ceiling and probably a replacement roof. The south doorway is an early 16th-century four-centred arch with a moulded surround and large cushion stops with incised side scrolls. It contains a late 17th- or early 18th-century fielded panel door with massive plain strap hinges and an oak lock housing.

Ceiled wagon roofs run throughout the church. The roofs to the nave and aisle appear wholly 19th-century. The more ornate chancel wagon roof, with its small panels, cross braces and carved bosses, may include 16th-century carpentry but is painted, making positive identification difficult. It has an unusual delicate openwork wall plate of a type more typically expected on a rood screen. There is no chancel arch; the break is reflected by the roofs. A tall granite tower arch has a chamfered double arch ring and plain responds.

The arcade is an early 16th-century five-bay granite structure (including one bay overlapping into the chancel) of round-headed arches on moulded piers with large moulded caps to shafts only. Floors are 19th-century tile except the Radford Chapel, which has 18th-century tiles and many graveslabs.

A very fine early 16th-century oak rood screen, faithfully renovated in 1910 according to a brass plaque, is continuous across twelve bays spanning nave and chancel and includes an empty doorway to each. In each bay the wainscotting has two panels of applied Perpendicular tracery. The windows are four-light with slender mullions and tracery characteristic of Pevsner's A-type. The ribbed coving above has carved bosses and cusped decoration in the panels. The broad cornice comprises two delicately undercut friezes of foliage with an equally delicate crested vallance and crest. A contemporary parclose is a simpler three-bay version with replaced wainscotting, square-headed windows with slender Perpendicular tracery and a carved cornice.

The chancel is plain and contains a 20th-century altar, a late 19th-century oak altar rail on twisted iron supports with foliate brackets, and probably 18th-century fielded panel benches used as choir stalls. The nave has 19th-century deal benches. A Gothic-style octagonal pulpit dated 1903 and made by Hems of Exeter stands in the nave. A similar Gothic-style oak eagle lectern dated 1909 is also present. A Perpendicular-style Beerstone octagonal font dates to 1840. 19th-century wrought-iron lamp brackets run throughout the church.

To the rear of the church is a 17th-century oak table with egg-and-dart carving around the top and an arcaded frieze, supported on eight turned legs with stretchers.

The Radford Chapel in the south aisle is now occupied by a 1927 organ. Its south-east corner contains an original round-headed piscina. A segmental arch above carries the wall diagonally across the corner and contains a grand mural monument to Ambrose Radford of Cheniston, built of rubble and Beerstone and richly carved. It features a rectangular plaque in a moulded frame over a garland of fruit, flanked by Corinthian columns surmounted by cartouches and supporting a moulded entablature with a semi-circular pediment providing a seat for two angels holding heraldic devices. Richly-decorated wings against the wall either side have a moulded sill with cherub corbels and an apron containing a shield set in a leafy cartouche and descending to a winged skull. The monument retains traces of ancient colour.

Another good mural monument to the right of the south door commemorates George Radford of Cheniston, built of grey marble and Beerstone. It is a rectangular plaque in an enriched frame with flanking Corinthian columns surmounted by cherubs' heads in a moulded entablature, a round-headed pediment broken either side of a cartouche on a carved plinth with horns statant either side, a soffit-moulded sill on consoles carved as grotesque lions' heads, and a strapwork apron featuring flowers and fruit around a skull.

Other plain marble monuments date to the 19th century, with one example in the chancel from the 17th century. A First World War memorial in the nave is a brass plaque with an alabaster frame. Stained glass of 1879 and 1927 is present in the chancel.