“What does the Lord require of you?
To do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your god.”
Micah 6 Verse 8
Thoughts on our 70th anniversary from the vicar
St James 70th Anniversary Vision
A Brief History of St James, Porchester
St James
Church was consecrated in November 1935 after St James Church on
Standard Hill in Nottingham
was pulled down to make way for an extension to the General Hospital.
The left side of the present building was known for many years as the
‘Barn Church’. It was originally a barn to Marshall Hill
Farm, built on the Mapperley Hills in 1798.
The, now demolished, farm house had been let to tenant farmers of the Thoresby Estate. This farm house became the first vicarage and it was replaced by the present one in the 1990’s.
This first church had no windows over the altar and would have been
a much darker place than it is now. Visible is the original, bricked
up door. This was the corn store and the nag stable where the gig and
the riding horses were kept. The ledges on the interior wall show where
the granary floor rested above the stable. The roof of the carthorse’s
stable was raised at the time of the extension. The children’s
corner was the site of the fodder room. The vestry and Den were the
cowsheds and pigsties.
In 1956 the church was extended, in a fashion in keeping with the original building, to cater for the growing population as Porchester Garden Estate developed into a residential area. It was dedicated as a Parish Church on July 26th 1956. Oak pillars support the old barn wall, with its original windows, and the new nave. The pillars are topped with carvings of old country crafts to remind us of our roots in farming and underneath the beams can be seen beautifully carved leaves.
This is a brief history of St James, ‘the Barn church’, whose old beams and weathered brick walls are a fitting background for the worship of Him who was born in a stable.
Compiled by Revd Phil Williams and Helen Briggs, Church Warden
Cancellarius
The ‘Incumbents Plaque’ can be seen on the wall of the barn in the children’s corner. This is the list of the Priests in Charge of St James – before the extension in 1956 and the vicars since then, after St James was granted Parish Church status. I found this board, forgotten, thick with dust and well out of date, in the loft over the vestry. To mark the 70th anniversary the PCC agreed it should be updated, restored and put in church. It has never been in church before, it previously hung in the old vestry, perhaps because it had the wrong date on it right from the start, 1937 instead of 1935.
The interesting provenance, hand written on a card taped to the back, claims that this board once hung in the Chapter House of Southwell Minster. It would be very interesting to know how it found its way to St James.
The Latin word at the top of the board ‘Cancellarius’ (pronounced chancellarius), is an early word for ‘gatekeeper’ and later a ‘legal scribe or secretary.’ This leads to the modern word, chancellor and chancel.
The oldest use of the word I can find is in a document dated 1259 which translates ‘cancellarius primi loci campi boari’ as ‘the gatekeeper of the cattle pen.’ Well there we are, perhaps that is why it came to our Barn Church to hang in the converted cattle shed!
Look out for more history, the definitive version, of our church, on the Southwell Churches web site later in the New Year.
Helen Briggs
A comprehensive history of the church is in the process of being completed for the
Southwell Church History Project.
The Southwell Church History project began as a labour of love by the late John Severn. His intention was to build a reliable database of historical knowledge about all of the churches of Southwell Diocese. The Diocesan Advisory Committee (or DAC) saw that this would be extremely useful in its own work of caring for the churches in the diocese, and it agreed to take the project on board. John Severn was, at that time, a much-respected member of the Committee, but sadly he died in 1998. However the project is now being continued by others.
The Southwell churches project
Below is
a list of all the churches in the Diocese of Southwell.
The
Southwell churches
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