St James's Church, Kingston (Isle of Purbeck)

About

The Church of St James is the parish church for the village of Kingston, located on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. The church is a notable example of the Gothic Revival style and is a Grade I listed building.

History: From the 12th century, Kingston was a chapelry of nearby Corfe Castle, served by a chapel of ease in the east of the village. In 1833, John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon, demolished the old chapel and rebuilt it, at his own expense, on the same site to become the parish church. The new chapel, dedicated to St James, was designed in the Gothic Revival style by George Stanley Repton and followed the plan of the original chapel. In 1873, John Scott III, now the 3rd Earl of Eldon, commissioned George Edmund Street to draw up designs for a much larger church (the present building), on a new site in the village, for use as a private chapel for the Eldon estate. Construction commenced the following year, and within only six years, the new church was finished, at a cost of £70,000. This was a massive sum of money for such a tiny village, and according to the National Archives, equivalent to more than £4.3 million in 2017. The church remained as a private chapel for the Eldon estate...