Church Of St James With Holy Trinity (C Of E)

Church of St James with Holy Trinity (C of E)

This parish church on Seamer Road in Scarborough was originally built as a Mission Chapel in 1885, founded by F Hartop Holt, honorary curate at All Saints Church, Scarborough. The church was designed by the noted architects Paley and Austin of Lancaster. Much of the financial support came from the founder's aunt, the widow of the engineer James Nasmyth, inventor of the steam hammer. The mission chapel thrived and was upgraded to a parish church in 1893 on condition that seating capacity was doubled from 150. This resulted in the addition of side aisles and the west porch in 1894, designed by the same practice. The stained glass was produced by Shrigley and Hunt.

The church is constructed of brick with stone dressings, employing Gothic revival architecture principally in the Decorated period style. It features mainly tile roofs with lead roofing to the side aisles and porch.

The plan comprises a nave with side aisles, a chancel to the east, and a porch and vestry to the west. A bell tower rises above the east end of the south aisle, with a former boiler room now partly occupied by the organ beyond. An undercroft, including a former Sunday Schoolroom, lies below the east end of the church and is accessed at ground level from the south side.

The east end of the chancel has three two-light segmental arched undercroft windows with the main east window above, all within a set back arched panel. The main east window has a two-centred arch with four lights in two stages, upper rectilinear tracery and rounded heads to the lights, with glazing bars externally of rubbed brick. The gable is raised and stone coped with a Latin cross finial. The head of the gable is in stone ashlar and has a central ventilation slit with louvers. The south wall of the chancel has a rubbed brick three-light window with curvilinear tracery above the side lights only, beneath a two-centred arch set in a recessed arched panel. The north wall is blank.

The north aisle has an angled east end meeting the chancel with a two-light window with cusped tracery. The north wall has three similar windows. The roof is low pitched lean-to and leaded.

The nave roof is tiled and continuous with that of the chancel, with a raised coped gable without finial. The west window has four lights arranged in pairs with rectilinear rounded trefoil headed tracery beneath a low segmental arch, externally of rubbed brick.

The porch and vestry form a flat roofed, single storey structure spanning the west end of the nave and north aisle. It has a brick coped parapet, decorative rainwater hoppers, square headed fifteenth-century style windows in stone and a central stone arched entrance with double door.

The south aisle is similar to the north aisle except for a two-light west window and two four-light south windows, all with stone quatrefoil tracery. At the east end of the south aisle stands the bell tower in the form of a stack of three empty bell cotes topped with a short slated spire extending from a slated gable roof. Atop the spire is a fish shaped weathervane. Immediately east of the bell tower is the organ chamber, probably originally intended as a bell ringing chamber and vestry with boiler room below. This has a roof continuous with that of the nave and a three-light mullioned window formed with rubbed bricks. The original boiler chimney has been removed.

Within the chancel, the east window contains stained glass in memory of the church's founder, dedicated in 1910. It depicts the Last Supper in the upper lights and symbols of the Passion in the lower lights. The south window, dating to after 1909, depicts our Lord with St John to the left and St Paul to the right. The carved oak reredos and altar date to 1938, with simpler oak panelling continuing from either side of the reredos around the back of the oak choir stalls of 1911 to the rood screen. The rood screen with integral pulpit was installed in 1921, also in oak and inscribed as a First World War Memorial. It lists civilians killed during the naval bombardment of Scarborough on 16th December 1914. The roof, continuous with that of the nave, has exposed double arch-braced trusses.

The nave arcades to either side open to the side aisles with two-centred pointed arches springing from columns without capitals. The columns are of chamfered diamond cross section with their long axis at right angles to the nave. At the west end on the north side there is a half arch; on the south side there is a buttressed wall including an arched door, presumably originally an external door before the addition of the south aisle. At the east end is an artificial stone font installed in 1947 that forms a Second World War memorial. The west window is plain glass.

The north aisle's east window, installed in 1894, depicts the call of St James and St John. The three other windows depict (from the east) St Peter and St Paul (circa 1901); King David and St John the Baptist (1900); and Isaiah and Jeremiah (1906).

The south aisle is known as Trinity Chapel following the merger of the parish with that of Holy Trinity in 1993. It contains one stained glass window installed in 1900, known as the Martyrs Window, depicting St Stephen, St Alban, St George and St Lawrence.