English Church Architecture - Somerset.
HALSE, St. James (ST 140 278) (March 2005) (Bedrock: Triassic Sherwood Sandstone Group, Otter Sandstone Formation)
This is another village situated above red Triassic Otter sandstone, with a most striking church (shown left, from the west) constructed almost wholly of this material, except for the dressings in golden Jurassic Ham Hill stone. Consisting of a chancel, a nave with a S. porch, a large independently-gabled N. aisle that continues for one bay as a chapel alongside the chancel, and a W. tower, it retains as its earliest features, the Norman-Transitional S. doorway (inside the porch) with a round-headed arch above a curved lintel, and the very crudely constructed tower arch, which is pointed but bears only the slightest of flat chamfers. The upper parts of the tower appear to date from the second half of the fourteenth century to judge by the two-light bell-openings with straightened reticulation units in the heads; the W. window has alternate tracery and the whole structure is supported by a diagonal buttress at the northwest corner only, beside which a projecting semicircular stair turret rises about halfway up. The rest of the building seems likely to date from the fifteenth century, apart from the Tudor N. wall of the N. aisle. Walking clockwise around it, the N. aisle W. window and N. chapel E. window are four-light, with supermullioned tracery, subarcuation of the outer lights in pairs, and through reticulation. The three-light N. windows between are square-headed, untraceried and uncusped, and there is a very depressed N. doorway with tiny spandrels containing shields. Between the second and third windows from the west, there is a very large, flat, semi-octagonal projection for a stair turret, the importance of which becomes evident inside. The three-light chancel E. window has alternate tracery with subreticulation, and the chancel S. windows are two-light, square-headed and untraceried. The nave S. windows are similar and there is another, squashed in, high up to the east, whose function is obviously to cast light on the rood loft. The porch has three-light, square-headed side windows with nice supermullioned tracery, and a segmental-arched outer doorway.
However, the church interior is more interesting than the exterior, due chiefly to the huge fan-vaulted rood/parclose screen that extends
right across the nave and N. aisle, in five and four bays respectively. It
is particularly impressive for the four tiers of carving on the top rail and
cornice
(illustrated right),
and features brattishing above, carved leaf bosses on all the nodes, blank
cusped,
fish-shaped arches in the spandrels, and piers with three
The roofs of the building are everywhere of wagon type, now ceiled and seemingly renewed in the nave, but still open and probably at least partly original in the chancel. The aisle roof continues over the chapel without structural division. Most other woodwork appears new, but the circular font, which is probably Norman-Transitional again, has blank fish-shaped arches around the bowl like those beneath the rood screen vault, and is in all probability the source of that design, although it is also one that fits these curved spaces particularly well. |