Church of St John the Evangelist and Parish Hall including boundary walls and railings, gates and gateposts, and lychgate

Church of St John the Evangelist and Parish Hall including boundary walls and railings, gates and gateposts, and lychgate

Anglican church of 1879, and former school now used as parish hall, designed by David Walker of Liverpool.

The buildings are constructed of coursed, rock-faced sandstone with slate roofs.

CHURCH

The church has a chancel, south-west turret with spire, and nave. Set back from Chester Old Road with a surrounding churchyard, it is designed in a free adaptation of 13th century Gothic style with all openings featuring ashlar quoined surrounds.

The single-bay chancel is lower and narrower than the nave, with low-level buttresses towards the east end of each side and a vestry on the north side. The vestry is entered by a door on the east wall with steps and has a two-light mullioned window in the north wall. The south wall of the chancel has two adjacent windows: one plain with a shouldered pointed arch, and one of two similar lights with a quatrefoil above. The east end of the chancel has corbelled and gableted kneelers. The east window is a tall pointed arch with portrait hoodmould stops, comprising four equal lights separated by slender chamfered mullions with simple geometric tracery in the arch.

The three-bay nave has mid-height buttresses and gableted coping kneelers with windows of two and three lights featuring mullions and trefoil and quatrefoil tracery. A boiler-house and enclosure have been erected against the north side. A south-west porch clasps the square base of a slim stone turret, which is cylindrical with a conical ashlar roof, slender belfry lancets and lucarnes. The porch has buttresses and a Gothic-arched doorway with delicately carved imposts. The west window has a hoodmould with portrait stops and is tripartite with octagonal columns, a central mullion and pointed heads with geometric tracery. Rainwater goods are cast-iron, supported on curlicued brackets.

Interior

The chancel is separated by an arch and a screen in the Perpendicular style with openwork panels, niches and statues of Saints Mary, Peter, John and Mary Magdalene. The east window is by the Mayer company and depicts scenes in the life of Christ. The chancel south window shows Christ healing Peter's wife's mother. The roof is barrel-vaulted with moulded timbers, and the floor has patterned encaustic tiles, partly concealed by carpets. The altar, altar-rail, reading-desk and choir pews are all of oak. The octagonal stone pulpit with Purbeck marble shafts is in the same style as the font, which remains in its original location at the west end of the nave. The nave has a wood-block floor and retains simple pews. The roof is exposed, with queen-post trusses supported on moulded stone corbels, with two collars, struts and arched braces. The nave south window by H G Hiller depicts Christ blessing little children, flanked by scenes of the 'New Order' as described in the Gospel of St John. A second window on the south wall shows local scenes, including the Stanlow oil refinery and the Manchester Ship Canal. The west window is by Henry Holiday, possibly manufactured by Clayton and Bell, and depicts Old and New Testament scenes on the themes of faith, hope and love.

On the north wall are an alabaster tablet with portraits of Peter Owen and Stanley Owen beneath Gothic canopies, and matching alabaster memorials to two grandsons of Peter Owen who were killed in conflict, one surmounted by the insignia of the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment and the other by that of the Red Cross. The west wall hosts a carved oak parish war memorial, flanked by the battlefield crosses of four Great Sutton men who died in Flanders. The porch floor is laid with polychrome tiles and the roof has scissor-brace trusses.

PARISH HALL

The hall is orientated east-west in an ecclesiastical Gothic style in coursed rock-faced stone matching the church. It is surmounted by a tall, slated fleche which is diagonally set and has timber louvres. The red clay ridge tiles have holed crests.

The south wall has a projecting, shouldered chimney breast with two octagonal flues and replacement pots. Either side of this are paired lancet windows, all linked by a projecting sill band. At the left is a projecting porch with a central Gothic doorway with original timber door beneath a gable, flanked by outshuts under catslide roofs. To the right is a concrete ramp with galvanised steel handrails. Modern rooflights have been inserted. On the left return, the main wall in the centre is buttressed and gabled, while the west walls of each porch have a pair of small windows. The large west window of the hall is of four lights with stone mullions and transoms to the two taller central lights. Quatrefoils decorate the ashlar tympanum above the outer lights. Each junction of the metal glazing bars has a floral boss. The north side is similar to the south, but with a chimney stack behind the porch rather than offset, and a longer eastern outshut to the porch. To the left of the north door, a stone-coped boundary wall projects towards the road, faced with stone to the west but brick to the east, with a later brick end quoined in. To the left of the outshut is a three-light window with later rooflights above, and further left a single-light window, all linked by a projecting sill band. The sill band returns along the east wall, rising in the centre to meet the higher sill of the east window. This is similar to the west window but of three lights and with a plain tympanum. The east walls of both porches have two-centred-arched doorways.

Interior

The hall is divided by a cross-wall with a large triangular window, with a mezzanine floor to the west and modern finishes throughout. A brass plaque records the dedication to Eleanor Owen.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES

A lychgate with stone walls and oak roof and gates stands at the south-west corner of the churchyard. Stone walls topped with iron railings run along the western and southern boundaries; railings of a similar design run along the eastern boundary, as far as the path along the south elevation, where there is a gate. A wrought-iron gate with cast-iron posts leads from the churchyard to the parish hall, which has a stone boundary wall in the north-east corner.