St James Norlands Church

The Church of St. James, Norlands, occupies a commanding position at the northern end of Addison Avenue, where its tower marks the central north-south axis of the Norland estate. The site was presented by Charles Richardson, the owner of the estate, (ref. 5) and the church, designed in 'the Gothic style of the twelfth century' by Lewis Vulliamy, was built in 1844–5 at a cost of £4,941, towards which the Church Building Commissioners made a grant of £500. It provided some 750 sittings, and was consecrated on 17 July 1845. A district parish was assigned in the following year. (ref. 88)

The church is built of white Suffolk bricks, with minimal stone cornices, hood moulds, pinnacles and stringcourses. It is orientated east-west, and the tower is positioned south of the central bay, where it projects as the centrepiece of a symmetrically composed south elevation. The entrance is through a cavernous porch of brick set in the base of the tower. A gable containing a trefoil panel extends upwards over the porch into a large light enriched with handsome tracery.

The stark simplicity of the body of the church sets off the elegant three-stage tower, which was being 'raised' in 1850. (ref. 89) The first stage has gabled buttresses with roll moulded edges, and contains the porch and large traceried window. The very short second stage has a clock-face set in on each side in a shallow circular recess flanked by blind lancet panels. The final belfry stage is lighter and richer, with two deeply-recessed paired lancets flanked by single blind lancet panels set within a panel framed by pilaster-buttresses. A drawing in Kensington Public Library shows that the tower was to have been surmounted by a stone broach spire. This was never built, and with its thin octagonal pinnacles set on each corner, the tower seems somewhat abrupt without it.

The body of the church is broad and barn-like, and consists of a five-bay clerestoried nave with lean-to aisles. Galleries were added in 1850. (ref. 90) They rested on supports

which spanned from brackets on the cast-iron columns of the nave to the north and south walls, and must have given an appearance of solidity to the interior which has now been dissipated by their removal. The columns, quatrefoil on plan, are widely spaced, and support an elegant arcade above which is the clerestory, pierced by small single lancets, two to each bay. The aisles are lit by two ranges of paired lancets, above and below the former galleries. The roof is carried on simple wooden trusses of meagre design, supported on brackets. Each truss is placed over the top of an arch of the arcade, and the resulting division of each bay into two parts tends to confuse the architectural logic of the design.

Vulliamy's original design provided polygonal apsidal projections at the east and west ends, but these were not built. In 1876 the east end was extended under the direction of the architect, R. J. Withers, to provide the present chancel and vestries and an organ chamber. (ref. 91) The east wall of the chancel is a scholarly composition in the Early English style with three stepped lancets set in five stepped-lancet panels.

In 1880 a faculty was given for the erection of a reredos, for the reseating of the north and south galleries, and for the opening out of an arch westwards from the organ chamber. The reredos is of wood with a finely carved Last Supper, and has polychromatic decoration. Subsequent to a faculty of 1894, the chancel floor was extended westwards, a dwarf screen wall and ironwork were erected, new stalls were provided, and the walls of the organ chamber were raised in what is now the Lady Chapel north of the chancel.

In 1921 the organ was removed to its present position in the west gallery. Beneath this there is a robustly designed font in which green marble and glazed tiles figure prominently. Until 1948 the greater part of the interior was coloured, and the whole of the surfaces of columns and arcading up to the stringcourse was covered with printed patterns, with angel motifs in the spandrels. The ceiling surfaces of the nave and aisles were decorated with repeat patterns, that to the nave being an I.H.S. motif. On the wall spaces between each window of the north and south aisles were murals painted on canvas, but these were removed in 1950. (ref. 92)