St James' Church, Tebay

St James’ Church at Tebay in Cumbria is a peculiar little church. From without, it seems a little fanciful with its tower’s conical roof as though a long-haired damsel should peer out of one of its windows, and it has an apse at the west end rather than east, where the communion table sits. This is a good example of that peculiarly Victorian phenomenon, the Railway Church, and dating from 1880.

The London & North Western Railway Company’s shareholders largely paid for the church at the behest of the local vicar. Although their architect enjoyed using his imagination for the externals, he just reverted to his off-the-peg designs for the insides. They resemble a standard railway station with the two-tone brick style, which are used to a rather pleasing effect, such as may be seen at Manchester Piccadilly. The pews are like platform benches, their legs sticking out somewhat, which nearly caused me to trip. So a mediaevalesque exterior coating a ‘modern’, industrial interior.

There is a sense in which a church or chapel is a railway platform. They are places from which we depart. Whereas some doze off into idle fantasies instead of concentrating, and many actively wish they were somewhere else, some are transported by music and preaching to the very throne room of God to where, one day, they shall actually go. Churches are places which transport us; they ought not to be anchors or termini.

Great things He has taught us, great things He has done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.

-Fanny Crosby

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