St. James's Church plays an important role in the community of Hampton Hill. This is done in two different ways. One is by the clergy and lay people going out into the community, ministering to the parishioners and the other is by opening the church to individuals and groups and encouraging people to come into our midst.

The clergy are often out and about, visiting the sick or housebound, local hospitals, prisons and so on. The clergy and lay people also take Sunday afternoon services at Teddington Hospital, Marling Court and Laurel Dene. St. James's has a parish visitors group who have trained under the Diocese of London Parish Visiting Scheme to assist the priest by undertaking various ministries. See the Parish Visitors page for more information on this group.

For many years St. James's church has had connections with local schools, centres of the wider community of the parish. The vicar, Revd. Vannozzi, is a governor and vice-chair of the Governing Body of Hampton Hill Junior School, and regularly goes into the school for assemblies. He also visits Carlisle Infant School and Hampton Community College. Lady Eleanor Holles School welcomes him to the Junior Department to take assemblies and into the Senior School for a twice-termly celebration of Holy Communion. Local schools visit to learn about the church to help with their Religious Education work. One little girl's response to the vicar's question as to what goes in the font was "Is it Perrier?" Religious Education students from St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill also have also visited the church.

A special Children's Eucharist on Mothering Sunday is always a happy and well attended occasion with gifts of flowers for all the 'mums'. Sometimes, afterwards some of our young parishioners visit Laurel Dene to give flowers to the residents. The children enjoy the occasion as much as the older people, and their visit is much appreciated.

The ministry of music is an extremely important part of our parish’s life and witness. In this, as in many regards, the church is a major focus in the local community. The layout of the church, its fine acoustics and the facilities of the adjacent Church Hall all make St. James's an excellent venue for musical events. See the Recitals and Concerts page for more information about this.

Our uniformed groups are always welcomed into the church and they often assist in the informal services on the first Sunday of the month. It is wonderful that St. James's is able to inspire and educate such a wide age range.

The well equipped Church Hall is very well used. Among some of the regular users are the Nursery School, the Keep Fit Class, children's dance classes, the Fuchsia Society and the New Endeavour club for older people.

Historical Background to Our Church in the Community
At the ordination of the parish’s first incumbent, Revd. Fitz Wygram, the area was described by the Rev. J. Burrows, Vicar of St. Mary’s, Hampton, as “a wilderness with a number of habitations of the most wretched kind, inhabited by a still more wretched class of people”. The new St. James's Vestry dealt with the many secular and spiritual affairs of the new parish, and so the early history of both St. James's Church and the village of Hampton Hill are inextricably linked. Revd. Fitz Wygram and his wife, helped by leading laymen, dedicated their lives and a good deal of their money to improving both the conditions of the new parish and this included developing a wide range of organisations to benefit the community. In the words of Henry Ripley, a local historian: “The many squalid, unhealthy and overcrowded cabins were acquired and pulled down; streets lined with comfortable cheaply-rented cottages or commodious villas sprang up in all directions, and nearly every institution or movement necessary to the well-being of a community was inaugurated and carried out to a successful issue, without any regard to the expense entailed”.

A Local Board for Hampton and Hampton Hill was formed in 1891 and the village entered a new phase of parochial life taking on “its arduous responsibilities” including sanitation, street lighting, library, fire service and education. The board was largely made up of the same clergy, voluntary vestry members and churchwardens as had already been in office, but now with the backing of an electorate. St. James’s celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1887 by the providing the parish with a nurse, a “Victoria Diamond” nurse, as there still was no National Health Service at this time. The Local Board, renamed as Urban District Council in 1895 and with much the same membership, continued running the affairs of Hampton and Hampton Hill until 1937 when they were compulsorily incorporated with Twickenham, becoming part of Twickenham Borough Council. Since then St. James's relationship with the community has been directed by a variety of outreach projects focussed on mainly spiritual matters.

Revd. Fitz Wygram had a keen interest in education and early on established in School Road a boys’ school, now the Greenwood Centre, and a girls’ and infants’ school, now a warehouse. The schools were run on the principles of the Church of England’s National Society for Promoting Religious Education. The first great Education Act was passed in 1870 and over the years the schools had to conform to what was becoming a national system. The 1902 Education Act altered the position of the Voluntary Schools with the Middlesex Education Committee now being represented on the Board of Management. Inspection reports were usually good but it became difficult to maintain the schools financially, and the attempt to maintain them as church schools came to an end in 1928.

For detailed accounts of the historical background of St. James's relationship with the community, and of St. James's Church Schools, read the pages The History of Our Church in the Community and The History of St. James's Church Schools.