Church Of St James

BARROW IN FURNESS

SD16NE BLAKE STREET 708-1/5/31 (North West side) 06/05/76 Church of St James

II*

Church. 1867-69. By EG Paley, vestry added 1883. Red brick with blue brick patterning; ashlar sandstone dressings and spire; green slate roof. 6-bay nave with lean-to aisles and south porch; polygonal apse to chancel with 4-stage tower and spire on south side, organ chamber to north and vestry at end of corridor wing projecting east. Gothic Revival style: Geometrical and plate tracery. Orientated NE/SW, ritual orientation used here. Nave: chamfered plinth; offset buttresses between bays; 2-light windows with cusping, plate tracery, head-carved hoodmould stops and blue-brick relieving arches. Porch to bay 2: red sandstone colonnettes to enriched moulded arch, head-carved hoodmould stops, plainer arch within, 2-light side windows; steep gable with copings and cross. Clerestorey: pilaster strips between 2-light windows with colonnettes; brick cogging; ashlar gutter. Buttresses flank west window of 6 lights with king mullion, rose and hoodmould; blue-brick patterning on steep gable, ashlar copings. Tower: chamfered plinth, pilaster buttresses ending in offsets above 3rd stage. Colonnettes to trefoiled south door under arch with nailhead and hoodmould with angel stops; gablet over. 2-light window to east side. 2nd stage has trefoiled 3-light windows in arcading with continuous hoodmoulds; lancets to 3rd stage. Ashlar offset below louvred, 3-light belfry openings having impost band and tracery under pointed arches with hoodmoulds. Octagonal spire springs from gables with low-set splays between; lucarnes and weathervane. Chancel: lower; apse has buttress and plain east window flanked by traceried 2-light windows; carved eaves to hipped roof with cross. Organ chamber with rose window and 2-flue stack on north gable. Vestry, further east than the apse, has pointed door and window of 2 rounded lights to south; brick stack on left. INTERIOR: arcades have quatrefoil, sandstone piers and brick arches with ashlar hood-moulds; painted brickwork above. Composite roof of king-post and scissor-braced trusses. Alabaster font and arcaded, alabaster pulpit on sandstone plinth. Stalls at west end, the central 3 with crocketed canopies. Organ rebuilt from that purchased for St James' Palace by William IV in 1837, the makers Hill and Davison; used at the wedding of Queen Victoria in 1840 but disposed of in 1866 and brought to Barrow 1868. HJ Austin joined EG Paley in 1868 and the final scheme here is likely to show his influence. 'The best church in Barrow' (Pevsner); the brick arcading ahead of its time and probably inspired by GE Street. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Lancashire: London: 1969-: 33, 56).

Listing NGR: SD1946069944