Anglican church of St James the Greater, Daldington.
"For around 950 years a small rural community has been worshipping God in this building. Architecturally, it has suffered badly; for most of its history from neglect and then in the period 1887 to 1890, from a drastic and insensitive 'restoration'. What was once described as "from an historical point of view one of the most interesting edifices in the county", and "as curious and enticing an archaeological study as any," in Leicestershire, became within a few years, a church "so mutilated that little of the original fabric remains", and therefore "uninteresting". However, this judgement was given at a time when nothing post-dating the Reformation was valued, and today it has to be substantially revised.
There is a record of a church at Dadlington before the Norman Conquest, but the earliest parts of the present structure are probably of late twelfth or early thirteenth century.
DEDICATION.
St. James the Greater was one of the apostles and the first of the twelve to be martyred for his faith. With Peter and John, he was chosen by Our Lord to be a witness of His Transfiguration and his agony in the garden, and with these two he had a certain precedence over the others.
He was put to death by King Herod Agrippa I, to please the Jewish opponents of Christianity, and a legend relates that his accuser suddenly repented, declared himself a Christian, and was beheaded with him. He is often represented in art as a pilgrim with a cockle shell.
The Feast Day of St. James, Apostle and Martyr is celebrated on July 25th. Thus Dadlington's Patronal Festival falls within a few days of those of Stoke Golding (St. Margaret The Virgin) and Hinckley (The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). Dadlington and Stoke were both part of the ancient parish of Hinckley until 1865. St. James also links Dadlington to Sutton Cheney, two miles to the north-east, whose church shares the dedication to him.
The church stands on a little hill at the north-western corner of the spacious village green, with the Dog and Hedgehog Inn close by. Beyond the churchyard to the east, is the site of the old parsonage house, which had fallen into disuse by the seventeenth century, and is now long vanished. This land, occupied by Rose Cottage and a modern bungalow, is part of the chantry land purchased to provide an income for a priest to say masses for those slain at Bosworth Field in 1485. To the south of the church the parish room, built by the Reverend Henry Lomax in 1885 has recently been enlarged and converted into a community centre."
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