About Us

St James Garlickhythe is a warm and welcoming church where visitors are most welcome. If you attend our Sunday service we would love to have the opportunity to get to know you over a post service hot drink or glass of wine.

We are a Prayer Book church and all our services are taken from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer - which has been our tradition since the completion of our current building in 1685.

We are proud to be the church of the Intelligence Corps and hold their Book of Remembrance. A page is turned in the book on the first Sunday of every month.

Christians have worshipped on this site since Anglo-Saxon times and our church is first mentioned as a place of worship in a will dated between 1096 – 1115. The first recorded Rector was Peter del Gannok in 1259.

Before The Fire, the current parish boundaries were home to seven smaller parishes: St James Garlickhythe, St Michael Queenhythe, Holy Trinity the Less, St Michael Paternoster Royal, St Martin Vintry, All Hallows the Great, and All Hallows the Less.

The Parish Registers of St James Garlickhythe are the oldest in England.  The first entry was the Baptism of one Edward Butler on 18th November 1535. William Boyce the composer was baptised here on 11th September 1711.

St James was destroyed in The Fire, and Sir Christopher Wren re-built, and enlarged, that medieval parish church, which has since survived The Blitz, death watch beetle, and a crane accident which destroyed a large section of the south wall.  

We are also proud to serve our local community.  A number of Twelve Step groups, choirs, and businesses use our church, and a large number of Livery companies regard St James as 'their church'.

We are also home to the Royal Jubilee Bells, cast in 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

We very much look forward to seeing you.