JACOBSTOW CHURCH

St. James

The Revd Heather Jane Aston
The Rectory, Forrabury, Boscastle, PL35 0DJ
heather_solo@msn.com    Tel: 01840 250359

Churchwarden:

Brian Marshall
Tel: 01840 230526

Churchwarden:

Ray Fox
Tel: 01840 230153

Safeguarding:

Carol Williams
Tel: 01840 211094

PCC Secretary:
email
Audrey Atkin
Tel: 01566 781063

Welcome to the parish church of Jacobstow: St James in the Anglican Diocese of Truro and county of Cornwall England. Jacobstow Church lies about a mile off the busy A39 at Wainhouse Corner, midway between Bude and Camelford.

It is an idyllic settying for the parish church, a wooded hollow formed by two streams; the sycamore, copper beech and willow that enclose the churchyard on three sides form a magnificent backdrop to the 15th century church with its impressive tower.

Grade I - 15th Century Church

Jacobstow Churchtown lies about a mile off the busy A39 at Wainhouse Corner, midway between Bude and Camelford. It is an idyllic setting for the parish church, a wooded hollow formed by two streams; the sycamore, copper beech and willow that enclose the churchyard on three sides form a magnificent backdrop to the 15th Century church with its impressive tower. Nearby are cottages, the Rectory, the old Victorian school and the purpose built modern primary school all nestling out of the wind that blows from the Atlantic coast three miles away.

The church is dedicated to St James and there is evidence of a former Saxon church on the same site. The present church is mediaeval, with a nave and chancel and north and south aisles dating from the 15th Century, but representing a rebuilding of an earlier Norman one. Restored in the 19th Century, and improved in recent times, it continues to reflect the way in which the church adapts to change in taste, fashion, architecture and patterns of worship.

The three-stage battlemented granite tower houses a ring of six bells. The font is Norman of the Altarnun type and the altar is an Elizabethan communion table. An ancient altar stone is in the south aisle chapel: it was the main altar stone up to about 1550 in the reign of Edward VI when the Church of England was becoming more Protestant and an act required that all altar stones should be removed. This one became a footbridge over a stream. It was found and moved back to the churchyard as a seat in the 1800s, and installed in the south aisle chapel in 1972. The nails that form the cross on the base of the altar are 15th century, and were saved from roof restoration work in 1970.