• 1. St James, Radley, Berkshire,
    Interior to E.
    Parish church
    The village of Radley stands in a loop of the Thames that forms the boundary between the traditional counties of Berkshire (to the W) and Oxford (to the E). The village is now on the NE outskirts of Abingdon, and at the northern edge of the village stands the church and Radley College. St James’s church consists of a nave with a W gallery, a S aisle and S transept (housing the organ), a chancel and a W tower. The S aisle is separated from the nave by five bays of tall wooden piers that carry longitudinal arched braces instead of arches. It was restored and reseated by J. O. Scott in 1900-03. The font is 12thc., as is a corbel discovered during the 1900-03 restoration on the NE of the chancel arch.
  • 2. St James RC church, Reading, Berkshire, England
    Exterior from SW.
    RC church
    St James’s stands on the site of the N transept of the Abbey church; now on Forbury Road immediately E of the Forbury Gardens. The original church of 1840, built of flint from designs by Pugin, consisted of an aisleless nave with a S sacristy off the E end, and a semicircular E apse. There was no tower, but a simple bell-turret on the W gable. A major enlargement by Wilfred Mangan of 1925-26 added a S aisle, a narthex (Pugin's doorway being moved west), and an ambulatory around the apse. The sacristy was extended eastwards at this time. Finally a N nave aisle was added by H. Bingham Towner, work completed in 1962. The complex also includes a Priest House, S of the church, and S of this a school (now Forbury Gardens Day Nursery), parallel and similar in form to the church, even to the bell-turret. Access is through an arch at the end of Abbot's Walk into a path running along the W side of the complex. Walls on either side of this path include reset abbey stones. The complex was built on the site of the N transept of the Abbey church, and two masses of rubble marking angles of the transept may be seen at the front of the Priest House. The S boundary wall of the school is built on the line of the N choir arcade, and includes two pier bases. A respond base, belonging to a N transept chapel, may be seen in the Priest House garden. All these remnants of abbey fabric still in situ are dealt with more fully in the entry on the abbey itself. The present entry describes two capitals inside St James's, one remodelled as a font, and fragments of carved stone from the abbey built into the external walls of the church, the Priest House and the walls of the path running along the W side of the group.
  • 3. All Saints, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, England
    W tower, first storey, window above W door, N jamb, detail.
    Parish church
    The present church has a 13thc. chancel, a 4-bay nave of c.1300 and a 12thc. W tower of two storeys, the first divided by a string course at the level of the apex of the W doorway, to which a Perpendicular third storey was added. Inside the nave, however, the first bay of the S arcade is a pointed arch constructed from a carved semicircular arch of greater span, which Pevsner suggests was the 12thc. chancel arch. The present c.1300 chancel arch is supported on 12thc. responds and capitals.