In 1853 a new parish of St James (Docks) was formed and in 1857 a new parish church (image 1 and clipping 1) was built on the north side of Bernard Street on land donated by Queen’s College, Oxford. It was built in the Early English style by local architects William Hinves and Alfred Bedborough. The church was large, with 810 sittings (500 of which were free) and provision for future galleries to accommodate a further 600 sittings. The tower and 130-feet high spire in the original plan were never built. The original Hinves and Bedborough church was destroyed by enemy action in World War Two and rebuilt on the same site in 1956 (see clipping 2 below) using the original altar and font (image 2). The architects were Sutcliffe, Brandt and Partners. In 1965 the church was sold to the Greek community and converted into the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas.
Newspaper clippings:
- 1. Laying the foundation stone of St James's Church - (Hampshire Independent 22/08/1857)
- 2. Another Southampton church rises from its ashes in ultra-modern form - (SDE 07/09/1956)
Further reading:
Buildings of England: Hampshire and the I.O.W., by Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, p519. (H/i)
‘William Hinves and Alfred Bedborough: architects in nineteenth-century Southampton’, by Richard Preston in Southampton Local History Forum Journal, no. 17, Autumn 2010, p3-31. (HS/h)
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