St. James, High Wych
Pronounced High Why-ch not High Witch, this small linear village lies close to encroaching Harlow. The little church built as part of a group with the school next door in 1861 by C.E. Pritchett thrusts its spiky bellcote jauntily into the sky, bravely ignorant of Pevsner's equivocal judgement of this building as being perversely ugly and , if original then odd. However, when Herr P. got his knickers in a twist about something, it's generally worth a look, certainly when it ruffled his objective stance. Here the stripes of red and yellow brick edging the flint walls makes this a lively example of a muscular High Victorian church by a Rogue Goth architect, its spirelet an asymmetrical spaceship rising from polygonal to circular form. It bursts out with a gabled clock in Teulonesque style, growing up through the cat slide tiles of the enormous roof that covers nave and aisles in one sweep. On the south there's a porch with its own apsidal wart to the west answering those at the east end of chancel and aisle.
Pronounced High Why-ch not High Witch, this small linear village lies close to encroaching Harlow. The little church built as part of a group with the school next door in 1861 by C.E. Pritchett thrusts its spiky bellcote jauntily into the sky, bravely ignorant of Pevsner's equivocal judgement of this building as being perversely ugly and , if original then odd. However, when Herr P. got his knickers in a twist about something, it's generally worth a look, certainly when it ruffled his objective stance. Here the stripes of red and yellow brick edging the flint walls makes this a lively example of a muscular High Victorian church by a Rogue Goth architect, its spirelet an asymmetrical spaceship rising from polygonal to circular form. It bursts out with a gabled clock in Teulonesque style, growing up through the cat slide tiles of the enormous roof that covers nave and aisles in one sweep. On the south there's a porch with its own apsidal wart to the west answering those at the east end of chancel and aisle.
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Unfortunately from the point of view of those of us who work, the church is only open between 9.00 and 4.00, Tuesday to Friday during term time. There is at least a phone number given, 01279 726 476, which might be worth trying to see inside this rare example of such work in what is still a rural setting.
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