St James' Church, Cooling was restored in the 19th century, when a vestry was added, and the porch was rebuilt. It was declared redundant on 19 November 1976 and vested in the Churches Conservation Trust on 31 May 1978. It is now cared for by a group known as the Friends of St James' Church. The church is open daily to visitors. The churchyard provided the inspiration for the opening chapter of Charles Dickens' book "Great Expectations", in which the hero of the story, Pip, meets the convict, Magwitch. In 2005 the musician Jools Holland married the sculptor Christabel McEwan in the church. St
Letters of Charles Dickens noted that there were some errors and omissions of transcription he endorsed it as being in general extremely accurate, and thought the project as a whole "of incomparable value". New Dickens letters are discovered at the rate of about 20 per year, and they were for some years edited and published in Supplements to the Pilgrim Edition in "The Dickensian", the journal of the Dickens Fellowship. They have also been made accessible online by the Charles Dickens Letters Project, and it is intended eventually to publish a supplementary volume to the Pilgrim Edition. The costliness of both the Nonesuch and