Description

ILFRACOMBE

SS5247 ST JAMES' PLACE 853-1/7/125 Parish Church of SS Philip and James 16/03/92

II*

Anglican church. 1856 by John Hayward. Geometrical Decorated style. MATERIALS: snecked rubble with ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof with fishscale banding to spire. PLAN: Nave of 5 bays (with narthex), aisles, N porch, N transeptal steeple and S transeptal organ chamber, chancel, N chancel aisle, SE vestry. EXTERIOR: W end with 2 paired lights under cusped roundel flanked by buttresses with set-offs which project to clasp narthex which has 2 doorways to either side of a window (formerly a doorway). 3-light aisle windows. 2-light windows to aisles and spherical triangular windows to clerestory. Porch with heavy low buttresses and contemporary wooden gates. N chancel aisle with taller 2-light windows and more elaborate moulded surrounds and ball-flower to cornice. Prominent steeple: 3-stage tower with angle buttresses which to the NE incorporate the stair turret; deeply recessed 2-light belfry openings; cornice and pyramidal spire. 5-light E window. INTERIOR: nave piers alternating octagonal and circular in section, capitals with naturalistic foliage carving, moulded arches under continuous hood mould. Clerestory windows in richly moulded surrounds with shafts and hood-moulds and sills with ball-flowers. Internal shafting also to aisle windows. Arch-braced roof with collars, ashlar pieces and wind braces, 2 sets of side purlins and shafts on foliated stone corbels. Chancel: 3-bay arcade to N with polished limestone circular section piers, foliated capitals. Roof as to nave. S arch gives access to organ chamber. FITTINGS: stone reredos, a 2:3:2 gabled arcade with richly crocketed and finialed framing texts on slate, forms a single ensemble with the 2-seat sedilia to S. Pulpit, marble, polygonal with open arcaded panels, cornice and corner shafts to bowl and brass rails to polished limestone steps. Brass eagle lectern. Communion rail with barley-sugar stems, some clustered in groups of four, and foliated angle brackets. Font: square section with chamfered corners, the bowl with tapering profile and incised Celtic crosses all on four marble shafts and large central pier. Wooden seating with traceried frontals and ends. STAINED GLASS: W (commemoration date, 1857) with 4 Evangelists and their symbols; E, Scenes from the Life of Christ in shaped panels against decorated background. Full complement of 1850s glass to chancel aisle and sanctuary windows by different makers. An excellent church for its date in a serious Ecclesiologically 'correct' style with a full set of fittings. "The Ecclesiologist" considered it to be one of the finest churches that had been built in north Devon in the C19, by an architect whom elsewhere the journal had called one of the best then working in England. (The Buildings of England: Cherry B: Devon; 2nd ed.: London: 1989-: 502).

Listing NGR: SS5218847815

External Links

• Wikidata Q17532629

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Recommended Books

• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990