St James, Spilsby
St James, Spilsby
St James is a Grade I parish church on Church Street in Spilsby, East Lindsey, Lincolnshire, in the Diocese of Lincoln.
- Location
- Spilsby, Lincolnshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Lincolnshire
- City / town
- Spilsby
- Address
- Church Street, Spilsby, Lincolnshire, PE23 5DU
- Postcode
- PE23 5DU
- Built
- Founded 1348; late C14 and early C16; chancel rebuilt 1879
- Architect
- W Basset Smith (1879 chancel and south aisle)
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- James
- Diocese
- Lincoln
- Parish
- Spilsby
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Decorated and Perpendicular
- Materials
- Squared greenstone rubble, ashlar dressings and rockfaced limestone ashlar; lead roofs
- Grid reference
- TF 400 661
- Opening hours
- Open daily dawn to dusk.
- Access
- Ramp or level access available on request. Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets in church
Overview
Historic England records a parish church founded in 1348 as a college of priests by Lord Willoughby, with late fourteenth- and early sixteenth-century fabric and an 1879 rebuilding of the chancel and addition of a south aisle by W. Basset Smith. Materials are squared greenstone rubble, ashlar dressings and rockfaced limestone ashlar, under lead roofs. The plan is a western tower at the end of the inner north aisle, nave, two north aisles (the inner one a former nave), south aisle, Willoughby chapel in the former chancel, chancel and vestry.
The three-stage early sixteenth-century tower is of greenstone with facetted corner buttresses, a tall plinth with quatrefoil frieze, an embattled parapet with crocketed pinnacles, and triple louvred belfry lights. The original nave is now the inner north aisle; four-bay fourteenth-century arcades have octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. The fourteenth-century east window of the former chancel has five lights with reticulated tracery. The church is known for Willoughby monuments and a memorial to the explorer Sir John Franklin, who was born in Spilsby.