Church of St Philip and St James, Tow Law

The Church of St Philip and St James is a church in Tow Law, County Durham, England. The church was designed by architect Charles Hodgson Fowler (1840-1910) and completed in 1869. Built of sandstone, the decorated church features a south-west tower. It became a Grade II listed building on 5 June 1987.

The church is administered as one of The Four Parishes - including St Mary & St Stephen Wolsingham, St Bartholomew Thornley Village and St.Cuthbert Satley.

Notable people

The vicar of Tow Law from 1862 to 1888 was the Revd Michael Henry Simpson. Simpson's youngest daughter, Alice Pickering (1860–1939), was a tennis player who played twice in the Wimbledon Championship Final.

Another of Michael Henry Simpson's daughters, Florence Eva Simpson (1865–1923), known as Elva Lorence, became a published writer and composer, as well as a painter.

A third sister, Katherine Ashton Simpson (1858–1951), known as Kate A. Pearce Simpson, was a writer of books and musicals and poetry. She was also an artist, whose work was hung in the Royal Scottish Academy, at the Berwick Exhibition in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Her painting of her sister, Florence Eva Simpson, is part of the collection of Touchstones Rochdale gallery, run by Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service.