St James, High Melton
St James, High Melton
St James is a Grade II* parish church on Church Lane in High Melton, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, in the Diocese of Sheffield.
- Location
- High Melton, Yorkshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Yorkshire
- City / town
- High Melton
- Address
- Church Lane, High Melton, Yorkshire, DN5 7SZ
- Postcode
- DN5 7SZ
- Built
- C12, C14 and C15; C19 restoration
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- James
- Diocese
- Sheffield
- Parish
- High Melton
- Grade
- II*
- Style
- Perpendicular
- Materials
- Ashlar and rubble limestone; stone slate roofs
- Grid reference
- SE 509 018
- Opening hours
- The church is normally kept locked, except when there are events, please contact us to arrange a visit.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic England records a church of the twelfth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with nineteenth-century restoration, built of ashlar and rubble limestone under stone slate roofs. The plan is a west tower, two-bay nave and two-bay chancel with a continuous south aisle overlapping the tower, and a south porch. The Perpendicular tower has offset diagonal buttresses, a two-light west window with ogee-headed lights, a stair turret in the north-west buttress, transomed two-light belfry openings, and an embattled parapet with crocketed pinnacles. The nave and aisle are embattled; the south porch has a chamfered arch and an ogee-arched south door.
The listing highlights a painted reredos by Sir Ninian Comper of 1905–07 and an excellent fifteenth-century parclose screen to the south chapel with Decorated mouchette tracery. Wall monuments commemorate the Fountayne family. Glass includes fourteenth- and fifteenth-century figures in the north chancel and south aisle, eighteenth-century heraldic glass associated with Peckitt, and an east window by Kempe. The church was given to the Cistercian nuns of Hampole in the twelfth century as a chapel of ease.