Church of St James and southern boundary wall, Westbrook, Kent

Summary

Church. 1872-1873 by Charles Nightingale Beazley. Vestry and choir room added in 1907 by Beazley and Burrows. Attached church hall and link range added in 1971 and extended in 1995. This is not included in the listing.

Description

Church. 1872-1873 by Charles Nightingale Beazley. Vestry and choir room added in 1907 by Beazley and Burrows. The attached church hall and link range, added in 1971 and extended in 1995, are not included in the listing.

MATERIALS: coursed squared Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings. Clay tile roofs, with overhanging eaves to the nave and aisles. The spire is clad with wooden shingles.

PLAN: gabled four-bay clerestoried nave with lean-to aisles, lower chancel, short south transept containing a chapel balanced on the north side by the 1907 vestry and choir room (divided from each other by a panelled timber screen), south-west tower forming the porch.

EXTERIOR: the Gothic Revival church is designed in an austere later ‘Early English’ style with trefoil-headed lancets and plate tracery on the larger pointed-arched windows. The tower, set at the south-west corner of the church, is of three stages separated by string courses with the ground floor stage acting as a porch. It has a splay-footed spire, angle buttresses and a stair turret with lancets on the west side. The four arched windows in the top stage have plate tracery with timber louvers and on the south side of the middle stage is a round window with cinquefoil tracery. The double-height porch in the base of the tower has a tall pointed-arched south entrance with a drip moulding and half-height cast iron gates.

On the west elevation, the west window has plate tracery with three grouped lancets and a rose window in the spandrel. The aisles have paired lancets and are divided from the nave by buttresses with sloped capping.

The north elevation of the nave has triple lancet clerestory windows to each bay (although internally all the clerestory windows have sexfoil tracery). The bays of the aisle are divided by buttresses with pairs of lancets in each bay. The gable of the shallow original north transept has a round window with cinquefoil tracery and stone corbels to the eaves. The gable end of the 1907 vestry has an arched window with triple lancets and a round window with trefoil tracery. The returns have paired rectangular windows and the west elevation has a projecting stone chimney.

The east elevation has angled buttresses with trefoil decoration to the pitched caps. The east window has plate tracery with five lancets and three round windows with multifoil tracery.

The south elevation has four bays of triple lancet clerestory windows to the nave (the westernmost hidden behind the tower) but only three bays to the aisle because of the tower. The two eastern bays have paired lancets but the western bay only one. The south transept has angled buttresses, an arched window in the gable end with plate tracery with paired lancets and a quatrefoil. The western return has an arched doorway.

INTERIOR: the interior is of Bath stone ashlar. The nave, and chapel, have timber-framed roofs with closely spaced shallow trusses resting on a wall plate while the chancel has a boarded and panelled barrel roof. All arches are pointed with those to the aisles resting on asymmetrically arranged alternating round and octagonal columns. These have simple moulded capitals and cushion bases. The floors have panels of polychromatic tiles with geometric patterns, more elaborate in the chancel. The nave has plain bench pews. The main church door and the door to the choir room have ornate decorative ironwork strap hinges. Access to the tower is via an arched doorway in the west side of the porch.

The chancel has a south arch to the chapel with a glazed timber screen, north arch containing the organ (renovated in 2002), trefoil-arched piscina and pointed-arched sedilia all linked by a continuous hood moulding that also frames the reredos. Over the sedilia the moulding is topped by a fantail decoration. The arch between the south aisle and the chapel has a modern glazed screen and doors.

PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: the ornate Gothic pulpit, on the north side of the chancel arch, probably dates from 1875 when St John the Baptist Margate (who donated it to St James’ in 1937 to replace the original pulpit which was located on the south side of the arch), was restored by Ewan Christian. It is of painted white marble with unpainted marble statues of St Peter, St Paul and St John the Baptist. These are in canopied niches supported by angelic busts and divided by paired trefoil arches with green marble colonettes. The plain stone font has a rounded cup with scalloped metal edging set on an octagonal shaft and base.

Some Victorian stained glass survives in the windows of the south aisle including 'St James', probably by Alexander Gibbs (circa 1873) and 'Christ as Sower' by Clayton & Bell (1886). Other glass, largely replaced after damage to the windows during the Second World War, is generally plain apart from the east window of 1960 by Francis Spear, ‘The Spread of the Spirit’ depicting the spread of Christianity.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the southern boundary wall to Canterbury Road is of coursed ragstone with canted stone capping and pyramidal caps to the taller piers. Towards the western end the wall curves inwards to enclose the separately listed, Grade II Westgate and Garlinge war memorial.

History

Westgate-on-Sea was developed as a planned upmarket seaside resort from 1870 by the London developers, William Corbett and Alexander McClymont (who were also developing the West Brompton Estate in London at the same time), on farmland to the west of Margate. Plots of land were sold freehold at public auctions held in Westgate to those who wished to build their own private houses to plans approved by the Estate. Residents paid rates to the Estate owners according to the size of their property.

The developers employed the architect Charles Nightingale Beazley as the Estate architect and he designed the master plan for the Estate. He also designed the Church of St James, which, although outside the area of the Estate, was located to serve the new towns of both Westgate, and Westbrook further to the east. The Foundation Stone was laid on 23 March 1872 and the church was consecrated on 3 January 1873 at a cost of £3,553 to build. In 1874 a new organ was fitted and in 1876 the stained glass in the east window, probably by Alexander Gibbs (1858-1915) and depicting scenes from the life of St James, was installed (it was subsequently restored in 1931).

Drawings show that a vestry and choir room were added at the north-east corner of the church in 1907 to designs by Beazley and Burrows. In 1937 a new pulpit was donated by St John the Baptist, Margate and the following year new stained glass was installed in the windows of the chapel. On 14 April 1940 the church was damaged, and much window glass lost, by the explosion of a German landmine on the north side of the church. In 1960 a new east window was installed, ‘The Spread of the Spirit’ by Francis Spear (1902-1979).

In 1967 the original vicarage to the east of the church was sold and subsequently demolished while in 1971 a church hall was added at the east end of the church. This was later extended to the south in 1995. The church roof was renewed in 1994 and in 1995 the chapel was enclosed with timber-framed glazed screens.

Charles Nightingale Beazley (1834-1897) was born in Esher, Surrey and was articled in 1853 to William Wardell (1823-1899), a noted church architect and pupil of Augustus Pugin. Between 1856 and 1858 Beazley was an assistant to another major church architect G E Street (1824-1881), designer of the Royal Courts of Justice, who was the diocesan architect for the Diocese of Oxford. Beazley began independent practice in 1860 and from 1884 worked in partnership with H W Burrows (1858-1941). After his appointment as Estates Architect at Westgate-on-Sea in 1870, Beazley worked extensively in the town during the 1870s and 1880s, later residing there. A number of his buildings are listed at Grade II including the Church of St Saviour, Westgate (1883-4), Ellingham, a house in Westgate (circa 1883) and the Margate clock tower (1888-9) for which he was the consulting architect.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of St James, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, built between 1872 and 1873 to designs by Charles Nightingale Beazley, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* a well composed and executed church in the Gothic revival style to the designs of a noted local architect;

* it survives well both internally and externally;

* for the quality of its late C20 east window by Francis Spear;

* for its overall high-quality craftsmanship and use of materials.

Historic interest:

* as the first church built for the private resort development of Westgate-on-Sea, a westward extension of the nationally important seaside town of Margate, by its estate architect.

Group value:

* with the Grade II listed Westgate and Garlinge War Memorial in front of the church.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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