Church of St James the Great

The Church of St James the Great is a large church built in the late 13th century Gothic style. It is constructed from pink-grey Swelldon stone with bathstone dressings and features slate roofs. The church has a tall northeast porch tower topped with a stone spire, a tall clerestorey, and an apsidal nave with low lean-to aisles and a northwest porch. The nave elevation includes ten clerestorey lancets set in broader arches, and the aisle windows are broader with two-cusped lights and quatrefoil heads. The eastern end is apsidal with lancets and a shallow ambulatory that features sculpted heads in roundels, along with a transept-like organ chamber to the south. The northeast tower is adorned with a stone broach spire that has lucarnes, stepped buttresses, and louvred two-light bell-stage windows with geometrical tracery, along with smaller windows below. There is a Gothic archway leading to the porch, and the northwest porch has a half-timbered gable with bargeboards, a Gothic doorway with fleurons, and simple boarded doors. The spandrels feature reliefs of censer-swinging angels.

The west front consists of three bays with outer stone buttresses that are stepped and gabled, flanking a narrower pair of buttresses. It has three tall two-light windows with geometrical tracery and a smaller two-light window above the center. Inside, the church is faced with bathstone and features an arch-braced roof with cusped wind braces and wall-shafts. The nave is five bays wide with broad arches, two clerestorey windows per bay, alternating round and octagonal shafts, stiff-leaf capitals, and arcade hoodmoulds with rich floral stops. There are marble steps leading to the apsidal chancel, which has a high wide chancel arch. A wooden Perpendicular style screen with a rood separates the chancel from the narrow ambulatory. The reredos is carved and gilt, painted with statues of The Lord, St James, John the Baptist, and Welsh Saints. The chancel lancets contain stained glass depicting The Lord and Welsh Saints. Notably, there is a very fine octagonal polychrome pulpit from 1892 that features figures of famous preachers.