St. James's House

St. James’s House is a large house, largely dating to the early 19th century, with earlier elements. The property has been altered and used as a school boarding house, obscuring some original features.

The main facade is of red brick in Flemish bond, with rusticated stone quoins. The rear wings are of red brick and local red sandstone rubble, with a rendered and painted section. All parts have Welsh slate roofs. The house presents a seven-window front, divided into two distinct sections of five and two windows respectively. Three wings are set to the rear.

The left-hand section is three storeys high with five windows and a central entrance. The windows are early 19th-century sash windows set within mid-18th-century surrounds, which include keystones. A larger, semi-circular headed window in the centre of the first floor was enlarged to provide light for an inserted staircase. The entrance features a six-panel door with a fanlight and a Doric wood portico, both added in the early 19th century. Ground and first-floor sashes are 6 over 6 pane. The central first-floor window is 8 over 8 pane with a stucco architrave. The top-floor windows are 3 over 3, again with a lugged stucco architrave to the central one. A hipped roof is topped with a stack on the left gable. A late 20th-century two-storey rear wing has three sash windows.

The right-hand section is a two-storey wing incorporated into the main house, with two early 19th-century 6 over 6 pane sashes. There is no door to the street, and the roof is plain.

Wrought iron spearhead railings run along the front of the building. The rear elevation shows three gabled wings. The wing on the left is rendered and painted with an uneven gable and a 6 over 6 sash window. Next is a three-storey wing with a modern door and a flat-roofed ground-floor extension. A massive external stack, now truncated, is flanked by two-light mullioned windows on the first floor, with a small attic window above. This wing was once complete with an additional stack, as shown in historical photographs, and lacked the late 20th-century brick wing that now exists.

The interior layout is complicated due to later alterations, including the breaking down of walls and dividing of rooms. The main entrance leads to a stairhall containing a mid-18th-century there-and-back-again staircase, fitted into an existing space with a wide curtail and two turned balusters with knops to each tread. The staircase rises only to the first floor, with a late 20th-century staircase providing access to the attic. Pedimented architraves are found on the doors. A room to the right of the hall has been opened into the adjoining wing. This section features a 3x3 compartmented ceiling, probably dating from around 1600, though the beams have been altered, losing roll mouldings or plaster decoration found elsewhere in the house. The attic rooms have a full-height wall on the front and a principal rafter ceiling with two tiers of purlins, likely dating to the 17th century. The first floor of the stone rear wing contains another compartmented ceiling with decorated plasterwork on the beams and relief fleur-de-lys in the compartment corners.