.

St James’ Church

South Wraxall, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

.

Like most of the other churches of the Bradford Hundred villages, St James’ church was largely rebuilt in the 19th century, leaving the medieval tower and porch with adjacent Long Chapel. The church was for most of its existence a chapel of Holy Trinity, the mother church of the large parish of Bradford on Avon. It was mentioned in a list of Bradford’s chapels in 1349, but a record of a chaplain at Wraxall c1227 suggests there might have been an earlier one. It became separated when the ecclesiastical parish of Atworth & South Wraxall was created in 1846. It is now part of the united benefice of the Churches of North Bradford & Villages -with Christ Church in Bradford, St Nicholas in Winsley and St Peter in Monkton Farleigh.

The tower is the oldest part, built early in the 14th century. It has a stone saddleback roof, as has its fairly massive stair turret. The combined south porch and Long Chapel was built under its own roof, parallel to the nave, in the 15th century and altered in the 16th. The Long Chapel contains memorials to members of the Long family who owned South Wraxall Manor. The main body of the church was rebuilt in 1823 by Bath architect H.E. Goodridge and further with the rebuilding of the north aisle, chancel and vestry in 1882 by Henry Weaver and Charles Septimus Adye of Bradford on Avon. A watercolour painting by John Buckler in the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes shows how the church looked in 1808, before the rebuild.

The tower’s four old bells, including one dated 1553, were recast in 1769 and two more added by Abraham Bilbie, bellfounder of Chewstoke in Somerset. The six bells were removed in 2021 from their rotten wooden frame and hangers which were replaced with steel, completed in May 2022.

The south porch and Long Chapel