Our Lady and Saint James, Bangor

Introduction

Our Lady and Saint James in Bangor was built in 1866 by Kennedy and Rogers, architects of Bangor, with Kennedy serving as diocesan architect.

Architecture and furnishings

A south chapel was added to the church in 1884. The church is in Decorated Gothic style with curvilinear window tracery. The church has a prominent three-stage southwest tower with a broach spire, and a six-bay triple nave plan with a lower three-bay chancel. The masonry is snecked rubble with Anglesey marble dressings, slate roofs, gable finials, corbelled eaves, and stepped buttresses.

The interior has cylindrical piers to the nave with a plain hammerbeam roof on uncarved springers. The church contains Gothic furnishings including an octagonal font with marble columns. There is a stained glass window of the crucifixion in the Lady Chapel by A Gibbs. The bell stage has a 2-light impaled trefoil louvred opening with a quatrefoil cill band over a circular clock face with rounded label.

The chapel's south face has acutely pointed and non-medieval traceried windows flanking paired lancets. The east face has a 3-light impaled trefoil window over the entrance with foliage capitals. The chancel has paired and single light windows and a 4-light double cusped east window. The vestry's east face has a 2-light window below a punched quatrefoil, with a stone chimney stack.

The west end is twin-gabled with a high plinth and 3-light windows. The masonry detail of the whole building is slightly unfinished. The triangular churchyard is bounded by contemporary Gothic railings and entered from the east between gate piers.