St James' Church, Briercliffe

St James' Church, Briercliffe

St James' Church, Briercliffe, from the east
St James' Church, Briercliffe
Location in Lancashire
OS grid reference SD 867 349
Location Church Street, Briercliffe, Lancashire
Country England
Denomination Anglican
Website St James, Briercliffe
History
Dedication Saint James the Great
Consecrated 26 September 1941
Architecture
Status Parish church
Functional status Active
Heritage designation Grade II
Designated 10 March 1987
Architect(s) Edmund Sharpe
Paley and Austin
Architectural type Church
Style Gothic Revival
Groundbreaking 1839
Completed 1992
Specifications
Materials Sandstone, slate roof
Administration
Parish St James, Briercliffe
Deanery Burnley
Archdeaconry Blackburn
Diocese Blackburn
Province York
Clergy
Vicar(s) Rev Rachel Watts
Laity
Reader J. C. Scott, S. M. Lee
Churchwarden(s) A. Oldham, Mrs J. Berry
Parish administrator Mrs L. Rogers

St James' Church, Briercliffe, is in Church Street, Briercliffe, Lancashire, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Burnley, the archdeaconry of Blackburn and the diocese of Blackburn.[1] The church has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.[2]

Contents

History

St James was built in 1839–41 and designed by the Lancaster architect Edmund Sharpe.[3] The church cost about (£90,000 as of 2012),[4] most of which was raised by public subscription, and the land was given by the Duke of Buccleuch. It was consecrated on 26 September 1841 by Rt Revd John Bird Sumner, Bishop of Chester.[5] In 1869 a new steeple was added to the church and other changes were made to the church by Paley and Austin, Sharpe's successors in his Lancaster practice.[6] In 1881 new pews were installed and the old pulpit was removed.[5] In 1992 the choir vestry was enlarged and a meeting room was built.[7]

Architecture

Exterior

The church is constructed in sandstone with a stone slate roof, and is in Early English Gothic style. Its plan consists of a nave with a short chancel and a tower at the west end. The roof is steeply pitched and divided into three, although internally the church consists of a single chamber with a flat ceiling. The nave is divided into bays by pilaster buttresses, between which are lancet windows. The tower is partly embraced by gabled pseudo-aisles, and is in two stages. The lower stage contains a west door, above which are lancets and gables. From this rises an octagonal drum containing a belfry with lancets, and over this is a short octagonal spire. At the east end is a stepped triple lancet window.[2]

Interior

Inside the church are galleries on three sides supported by cast iron columns; the galleries contain box pews.[2] The two-manual organ was built in 1865 by Foster and Andrews of Hull. Improvements were made by the same firm in 1901 and 1906. In 1927 Jardine and Company of Manchester cleaned the organ and in 1989 they restored it.[8]

Assessment

In the Buildings of England series it is described as "a small, rather strange church",[3] but Hughes disagrees, saying "it is one of Edmund Sharpe's more delightful designs".[5] In the National Heritage List for England the description states that it is an "unusually unaltered example of an early 19th-century church".[2]

Present day

Services are held on Sundays and during the week on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The church is open for visitors every Wednesday afternoon.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ St James, Briercliffe, Church of England, http://www.achurchnearyou.com/briercliffe-st-james/, retrieved 13 April 2010 
  2. ^ a b c d "Church of St James, Briercliffe", The National Heritage List for England (English Heritage), 2011, http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1072658, retrieved 12 May 2011 
  3. ^ a b Hartwell, Clare; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2009) [1969], Lancashire: North, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 170, ISBN 978-0-300-12667-9 
  4. ^ UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Lawrence H. Officer (2010) "What Were the UK Earnings and Prices Then?" MeasuringWorth.
  5. ^ a b c Hughes, John M. (2010), Edmund Sharpe: Man of Lancaster, John M. Hughes, pp. 172, 177–178 
  6. ^ Price, James (1998), Sharpe, Paley and Austin: A Lancaster Architectural Practice 1836–1942, Lancaster: Centre for North-West Regional Studies, p. 81, ISBN 1-86220-054-8 
  7. ^ a b Briercliffe, St James, The Open Churches Trust, http://www.openchurchestrust.org.uk/Churches/Briercliffe.htm, retrieved 13 April 2010 
  8. ^ Lancashire, Briercliffe - St. James, Church Street, British Institute of Organ Studies, http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=S00063, retrieved 13 April 2010 

External links

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