High Wych

UPDATE 11/04/15 - I had reason to be in High Wych on Friday and revisited to see if I had been unduly harsh in 2011; I hadn't but I did take interiors since the church is kept open, in some ways a redeeming feature. I also found that Pevsner mentions it in his introduction: Pritchett’s High Wych of 1861 deserves to be specially mentioned as an eminently typical example of High Victorian design at its most revolting.

St James is a very peculiar Victorian build with an apsidal chancel and vestry attached to a hideous nave with an offset curious tower which is almost a minaret.

I had a look inside and ran away without bothering to record it - nor did Mee.

ST JAMES, 1861, by Pritchett (GR). A perversely ugly church, but as original in its handling of Gothic forms as anything in the Art Nouveau of forty years later. Flint, with red brick and stone dressings. Asymmetrical circular turret, polygonal above and ending in a spirelet. Very big, low-starting roof. S porch with an apsidal W bulge. Interior of yellow brick with red brick trim and much surface decoration at the E end. Thin circular aisle piers with big, square, richly and naturalistically foliated capitals. Pointed arches. The School next door also by Pritchett. Even the churchyard wall rises oddly at the gates.

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