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The small Cotswold village of Clapton, or Clapton-on-the-Hill, lies S of Bourton-on-the-Water. The village is in the centre of the parish, and the church is central to the village on sloping ground. St James is one of the smallest churches in the Cotswolds; it is built of rubble and consists of a chancel, nave, N vestry and S porch. The vestry and N doorway are 20thc.; evidence for an original N doorway was found during restoration work (Rood, personal communication). The Romanesque elements are the S doorway, tub font and responds of the chancel arch; the N respond has a Latin inscription in Lombardic lettering.
There is almost no documentary evidence for the church in the middle ages. The earliest references to the church, from the 17thc., establish that it was then---and may long have been---a chapel of Bourton-on-the-Water (VCH Gloucestershire).
Anon., Church of St James Clapton-on-the-Hill, Private Press.
F. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, London, 1899, III, 88.
C.R. Elrington (ed). 'Parishes: Clapton' Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, Vol 6. London, 1965, 59-63.
Historic England Building Listing 1154435.
C. H. Pickthorn,The Parish Church of St Lawrence, Bourton-on-the-Water with St James, Clapton-on-the-Hill, Gloucester, 1972.
M. Salter, The Old Parish Churches of Gloucestershire, Malvern, 2005, 51, 53.
D. Verey and A. Brooks, The Buildings of England, Gloucestershire I: the Cotswolds, Third edn, London 199, 282--283.
