Category:St James Anglican Church Luddenham

English: St James Anglican Church is the Anglican Church on Willmington Drive in Luddenham, New South Wales, New South Wales. This modest stone church with gabled roof and timber cross finials was completed in 1871 for the Church of England. The walls are constructed in a locally sourced sandstone laid as random rubble with quoins and window and door reveals and label moulds constructed in fine chiselled sandstone of a distinctive hue. The west elevation has a porch and the side elevations have three lancet windows. The east elevation has a lancet window of three panels. The gabled roof has exposed eaves and is sheeted in short lengths of corrugated metal. The entry door is a lancet shaped timber double door.

The church is set on a low rise at the southern edge of the village reserve. To the rear of the church a bell is set atop a timber post. The foreground of the church is cleared and contains a cemetery. The cemetery comprises sandstone and marble funerary stones with some wrought-iron enclosures. Both the church and cemetery are highly visible from the road and provide sense of entry into the village reserve. Open woodland partially forms the backdrop to the church and there is a view over cleared farmland west to the Blue Mountains.

Completed in 1871, the building demonstrates the development of a village at Luddenham in the late nineteenth century under the benefaction of the local landed gentry to serve the tenant farmers of the estate. The building is an excellent example of a rural church of the mid-nineteenth century retaining a form and detailing which provides insight into this type of building of the era, and its rural setting and cemetery atop a rise on The Northern Road. The building continues in use as an Anglican Church and is one of a number of structures in Luddenham village erected over the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century that demonstrate the pattern of a village settlement at this important location on what was then The Northern Road (now Willmington Road after The Northern Road was rerouted). This building is one of a contiguous group of three church related buildings. The cemetery is an important element within the Luddenham locality, illustrating the development of the village over the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century.

References

• Portions of this description come from the Heritage NSW description, which is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.