Parish Church of St James the Great

Details

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TL 4614
16/13

HIGH WYCH
HIGH WYCH ROAD (west side)
High Wych Village Parish Church of St James the Great

22.2.67

GV
II*

Parish Church. 1860-61 by George Edward Pritchett (1824-1912) for and chiefly at the cost of Rev H F Johnson (memorial in chancel). '1860' on rainwater heads and on brick at North East corner of nave. Foundation stone laid 25.7.1860: completed and consecrated 17.6.1861 (Bishops Stortford Observer 20.4.1861 and 29.6.1881).

A striking village church in Pritchett's personal interpretation of the Early English style. A vast red tile roof tops low buttressed walls of uncoursed knapped flints with red brick bands and stone lancet windows and dressings. The brick bands run round the buttresses, and red brick and knapped flint voussoirs alternate in outer arches over the two-centred arched stone heads of all windows and doors. The interior is in white brick with red brick bands, the chancel and apse are vaulted in brick and have painted linear diaper and foliage decoration on vault and walls.

There is a lofty four-bay nave, South aisle, South porch, South West round tower, a raised chancel, eastern apse, and South West vestry with a rounded East end. The rounded plan forms are echoed in the part-conical roof forms of tower, apse and vestry, flanking the higher gabled nave roof. The narrower octagonal bell stage and shingled fleche of the tower do not detract from the dominance of the nave. The aisle roof continues the nave roof at a flatter pitch. There is no clerestory and the nave is lit by tall paired lancets on the North and three lancets above the West door. Externally, this has two recessed orders with dog-tooth ornamentation to the inner, a cross worked in red brick on each side and glazed ceramic plaques with alpha and omega, set into the bottom stone of each jamb.

The South porch has a large apsidal bulge on the West, low trefoil headed windows on the East, and an ornamental dog-tooth arch with an outer order with deep hollows springing from a recessed shaft with foliate capital. Two ornate iron boot scrapers. Two simple chamfered orders to South door with hood-mould stops of king and bishop.

Interior of church virtually unaltered. The arcade with red and white voussoirs is carried on single slender stone columns with the exaggeratedly large square foliate capitals prominent in the wall paintings in the nave of St Albans Abbey. The two narrow arches on a central column under a wider arch, used between chancel and vestry, seems to be from a similar source although the column is here repeated in the depth of the wall as in a cloister. Polychrome encaustic tile floor.

Contemporary stained glass windows in chancel and apse and slightly later in nave, aisle and vestry. Jambs of brick chancel arch have dog-tooth arrises up to stone block at springing of chamfered brick arch with hood mould and foliate stops. Similar arch next to apse. Stone pulpit in North East corner with quatrefoil panel of a sower carved on West face, foliage carved shelf corbel, a marble shaft below an integral stone bible shelf, and stone steps on the South side. Square stone font on four marble pillars, with figure carving on each face.

Organ by 'Father' Willis about 1881, renovated by Willis 1946. Carved oak lectern by Warham Guild 1947. Original stone and marble reredos extends all round the apse with aumbrey and piscina in aedicules at ends. Carved surface diaper with openwork carved cresting with four freestanding shafts carrying angels above cresting. Marble figure panel behind altar. Altar-rails and dwarf screens to chancel by Warham Guild 1949. Gabled stone aedicule on South face of round tower has clockface set between spiral columns with six-pointed star carved above.

A striking church of original design of which contemporary critics said it shows considerable skill on the part of the architect (Ecclesioloqist (1861) 282) and which Pevsner regarded as "as original in its handling of Gothic forms as anything in the Art Nouveau of forty years later" (Pevsner (1977) 195-6). The church is of the greatest architectural interest, unaltered and retaining its original scheme of painted decoration counterpointing the white and red brickwork of the interior. It is also the key central building in the group of contemporary flint buildings by Pritchett for Rev H F Johnson built to furnish the centre of the newly created parish.

(Sources; Builder 8.3.1912 p 283: WEA II (1967) 28-30).

Listing NGR: TL4635214131

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

394243

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Cherry, B, The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire, (1977), 195-6
The Ecclesiologist in The Ecclesiologist, (1861), 282
The Builder in 8 March, (1912), 283

End of official list entry

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