Church Of St John The Evangelist

Church of St John the Evangelist is a church constructed between 1869 and 1871, designed by Paley and Austin. It is built of coursed squared sandstone with a red tile roof and is in a Romanesque/early 13th century style. The main components are a nave, a full-height apsidal chancel integrated into the nave, north and south aisles, a west porch, and a south-west tower.

The large, square, four-stage tower has a distinctive design with clasping corner pilasters that terminate in steeply-pitched pyramidal roofs, these clasping the lower stage of a steep pyramidal mansard roof. A rounded, two-centred arched doorway is moulded in four orders, featuring pipe-corbels to a carved tympanum. There is a single-light west window to the second stage, moulded in two orders, shafted blank arcading to the third stage with two small lancets in the centre of each side, and tall coupled belfry windows with shafts and louvres. The west end of the nave has prominent buttresses framing a two-bay porch with a mono-pitched roof and two doorways with moulded surrounds and carved tympana inscribed “In the Beginning” and “Alleluia Alleluia.” Above the porch are three lancets with linked hoodmoulds, and a moulded multifoil in the gable. The three-bay nave and two-bay chancel have pilasters with corner shafts, coupled windows to the nave and pairs of windows to the chancel, featuring a nailhead band in each bay. The aisles have cusped lancets, with a central buttress. The apse, which is surrounded by 20th-century single-storey additions, incorporates buttresses and two tiers of arcading with two-centred blind windows in the lower section and two-centred arched windows in the upper, and a nailhead band carried round.

Inside, the church has a wagon roof with tie beams supported by an arcade of alternating polygonal and clustered columns. Much of the original woodwork remains, including choir stalls and a pulpit decorated with incised flowers, a complete set of benches to the nave. There is blind arcading in the apse and a massive sculpted reredos added in 1879. Mosaic panels are found in the apse and over the west door, with encaustic tiles in the chancel. Stained glass, predominantly from the 1880s, is present, including windows by C.E. Kempe. The church is a landmark in its locality and was designed by a significant and influential architectural partnership of the late 19th century.