The village of Castle Acre is a major tourist attraction in Norfolk. The church dedicated to St James the Great stands in the middle of the village between the ruins of the Norman castle, to the east, and those of Castle Acre Priory, to the west. This Grade I listed parish church is largely C14th and C15th but there are some details from c.1300. It was restored by Ewan Christian, architect (1814–95). Built of rubble flint with squared knapped flint and cut stone dressings, lead roofed aisles, with green slate nave and chancel roofs. It consists of a west tower, a five-bay nave with clerestorey, north and south aisles, a north porch, a three-bay chancel, and north vestry.
The Perpendicular four-stage west tower has two angle buttresses to each face. Mounted on a moulded stone plinth the angle buttresses has five off-sets, the sixth stage above become angle clasping buttresses with tracery panels. A battlemented tracery panelled parapet surrounds a flat roof. The Perpendicular moulded arch west door has a large two-stage four-light embattled transom window with traceried upper panels above it. The sounding chamber has two quatrefoil sound-hole openings to each face with the bell stage having four two-light Perpendicular windows. There is a single, small clock face on the east face in the fourth stage and the north-east buttress contains a turret staircase, access to the upper stages of the tower. There is a complete Taylor ring of six bells in the tower.
The two storey Perpendicular north porch has an outer moulded arch, a large arched aumbry or stoup opening, and a blocked three-light parvise window. The five-bay north aisle has at its west end one three-light straight headed Perpendicular window and two windows under four-centred Perpendicular arches. The three central windows have rich Curvilinear tracery with two quatrefoils set in lozenges. The two east windows are of Rectilinear tracery, the richest at the east. Support is from five buttresses with two set offs. The five-bay south aisle has four Perpendicular three-light windows, one two-light west Perpendicular window with a battlemented transom, and one three-light Perpendicular east window. The five-bay Perpendicular clerestorey has three-light straight headed windows. The three-bay chancel has a re-set Early English south priest's door with collonnettes and a moulded arch, with a blocked arch above. This arch is some 14ft high, probably a window arch but may have been a priest door porch. There are two elaborate tracery three-light Perpendicular windows with battlemented transoms in the upper lights. The east window was replaced by Ewan Christian during his middle-brow 1870s restoration with an Early English style plain tracery four-light window. The distinctive two-storey elevation of the C15th north vestry has two two-light straight headed Perpendicular east windows, and three north side rectangular slits, an angle buttress, and stone parapet with four kneeling bear pinnacles.
The interior: The five-bay north and south arcades involve either the C15th rebuilding of the c.1300 piers or insertion of alternate C15th piers, all with Perpendicular double hollow chamfered arches. The almost detached shafts of the c.1300 quatrefoil piers come with original moulded bases and capitals alternate with quatrefoil piers with C15th bases and capitals. Tower and chancel arches are both Perpendicular in style, the tower arch having C18th Commandment boards re-used in the C20th screen. The double frame nave roof has perhaps C17th or C18th arched upper trusses resting on the main truss, and C19th boarding. Aisles have sides and upper arched trusses with crested framing of parclose screens. There are mid C19th roofs elsewhere.
The C15th octagonal stone font of simple design with roll mouldings running up from the stem to the bowl. It has a fine C15th spire canopy with an architectural frame of arches, buttresses and spirelets surviving, there are also panels missing.
The splendid painted C15th wine-glass or goblet pulpit has five large panels, four featuring the four Doctors of the Latin Church, Saints Augustine, Gregory, Jerome and Ambrose, being a popular devotion in late medieval Norfolk, and perhaps the blank panel featured the donor. The four doctors have been substantially restored, although it would appear that Gregory's papal tiara and Jerome's cardinal's hat have escaped the customary Victorian vandalism.
The dado of the roodscreen is all that survives, but the panels have been over-restored. They feature the 11 original disciples and St Matthias. Although much of the painting is now Victorian, they appear to reproduce faithfully what was there before. Two points of interest are the figures of St James and St Andrew. James has had his eyes gouged out, a reminder of how unpopular his cult was with the Anglican reformers because of his association with pilgrimage, which in turn was connected with the doctrines of purgatory and prayers for the souls of the dead, both anathema to protestants. Andrew has been peppered with gun shot - this time probably not as a theological statement, but a misfiring of a bird gun. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, when the churches of England had generally fallen into a poor state of repair, there were often problems with birds, especially jackdaws, setting up home in the nave and chancel roofs. Perhaps Andrew had the misfortune to have a bird land on his panel, attracting the wrath of some local gun-toting youngster. The rood stairs and rood loft door are in the south side of the chancel arch behind the pulpit. The rood screen was just part of an apparatus that ran the full width of the church, enclosing chapels at the east ends of both aisles. The wooden framing to these have survived and you can see where the parclose lofts were. Once, you could have walked on them, and the rood loft, right across the church. That in the south aisle encloses the St Nicholas chapel, which was its medieval designation. A surviving couple of screen panels feature his monogram. There is a good panel of medival glass here depicting a knight. It probably does not represent St George, being partly composite; the shield does not belong to the figure.
Both aisles have C15th poppyhead benches. Chancel stalls with medieval misericord seats, the front panels made up from re-used screens, probably from the Priory church.
In the chancel, south wall, a large mutilated piscina with a cut back triangular spandrel has traces of trefoils, it is perhaps c.1300th. The cusping of a previously magnificent canopy over the piscina has been sliced off flush to the wall. High on the opposite wall is a small window into what was probably a chapel above the sacristy.
Words from British Listed Buildings, Simon Knott's Churches of East Anglia, and Pevsner's Norfolk 1 Buildings with amendments from own on site observations.
Coordinates are for the north porch entrance.