The Priory Church of St James in Horsefair, Whitson Street was founded in 1129 as a Benedictine priory by  Robert Fitzroy, Earl of Gloucester and illegitimate grandson of William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of Henry I. 

Building work would have started with the now lost monk’s church to the east of the present church, there would then have been a crossing and then the church for the laity to the west.

The west end of the present church is believed to have been completed c 1170 and contains what is thought to be the earliest oculus or round, wheel window in the country.

The Priory benefited from substantial landholdings to the north of the then city, from the proceeds of the St James Fair and a tax on the import of wine during the festival of St James.

The early nave from 1129 survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries because an agreement in 1374 between the Abbot of Tewkesbury and the parishioners stated that the nave would become the parishioners responsibility, and the tower was added around 1374.

On 9 January 1540 the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII meant that St James Priory was surrendered to the crown.

The Priory was dissolved in 1540 as part of the dissolution of the monasteries and the monks’ church was demolished and Priory buildings sold and used for secular purposes. The present church remained in use by the parish.

In 1543 the land and the right to hold a fair were sold to a London merchant-tailor.

In 1604 there was concern that the national attraction of St James' Fair would increase the spread of the plague, so a royal proclamation was issued prohibiting Londoners from attending.

Church House passed into the ownership of Thomas and Anne Ellis whose initials and the date 1666 can be seen over the entrance to the house.

Thomas was a sugar manufacturer and a Ruling Elder in the early Bristol Baptist community.

The original narrow Norman south aisle was extended in the fourteenth century was widened and rebuilt in 1698.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was much reordering of the Church.

The south porch was added in 1802, the present east end of the Church was refaced in 1846 along with the glazing to the west and east ends.

The decorative glazed memorial windows to the north and south aisles date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The outer north aisle ( where the meeting rooms now are ) was added in 1864 and is by a Bristol architect, T.S Pope. The work was roundly condemned at the time by George Gilbert Scott and John Loughborough Pearson ( two of the most eminent Victorian Gothic revivalist architects ).

The traditional account, as told to John Leland,  has it that every tenth stone brought from Normandy to build the Castle was set aside to build the Priory.

The Bristol blitz and post-war planning drastically reduced the number of local parishioners and the church was declared redundant in 1984.

In 1993 it was taken over by an organisation called the Little Brothers of Nazareth, the forerunners of the present occupiers, the St James Priory Project.

Before the recent restoration the building was on the Historic England Buildings at Risk Register and described as being in very bad condition.

However, substantial restoration and reordering work was completed in 2011 (the building work cost £4.2million and was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Priory’s own resources and a range of other grant giving bodies )  and as of 2014 St James Priory is not on the Heritage Buildings at Risk Register.

Today, it is an active church within the Catholic Diocese of Clifton, which until 1996 was a Church of England place of worship.

​