St James the Great

It is the inside that makes the church so special, as its walls are covered in a wonderful jumble of paintings, with fragments and layers from many centuries on top of, behind, and around one another.

The earliest paintings are the ones that are most celebrated. They depict the life of St James of Compostela and date from the early 13th century. They are the only ones of their kind in Britain.

Parts of paintings from the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries also survive, some scraped back in the 1880s and 1950s so as to reveal more of the St James pictures.

The church also has a Norman font and many other features, ranging from the 12th to the 19th centuries.