Church Of St John The Evangelist

The Church of St John the Evangelist is a Roman Catholic church built in 1845 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. It is constructed of dressed sandstone with ashlar dressings, slate roofs with coped gables surmounted by crosses. The building comprises a nave with a clerestory and aisles, a chancel with aisles but an unaisled sanctuary, a single-story south porch, a west tower and spire, and a vestry block to the north-east.

The five clerestory windows are pointed quatrefoils under pointed hoodmoulds. The aisle windows are largely of two lights, mostly with ogee heads under a segmental pointed head; however, the baptistry window to the west of the south porch (in the second bay) has three lights with trefoiled subarches under a pointed trefoil. Similar windows, also under hoodmoulds, are located at the east end of the chancel aisles. The east window in the sanctuary has a hoodmould and three lights with pointed trefoil heads surmounted by a pyramid of three pointed trefoils.

The tower is fairly plain with angle buttresses and a splayed stair turret at the south-east corner. It features a two-light window above a richly moulded west door, a small ringers’ chamber window below a deep offset, and then, on each face, a two-light belfry window with reticulated tracery set beneath a continuous hoodmould. The broach spire has three tiers of lucarnes on alternate faces and a kind of coronet of blind lucarnes near the top, rising to a height of 110 feet.

Internally, the nave has five bays with double-chamfered two-centred arches on round piers with tall plinths. The floor was lowered circa 1900. The clerestory and aisle windows have rear arches with segmental pointed heads. The roof is open, with slender scantling, tall wall posts braced to tie beams which carry crown posts braced to collars and collar purlins. The aisles have lean-to roofs. A segmental pointed chancel arch has a continuous chamfer. The chancel, which has a wagon roof, is open to side chapels through double-chamfered arches. It includes a triple sedilia with cusped arches under a square hoodmould. Original fittings include a Crucifixion above the chancel arch and a former rood screen, now located at the west end. The screen, made of Caen stone but painted brown, has a wider central cusped and crocketed ogee arch flanked originally by two, and since circa 1900, by three, similar but narrower arches on each side, a plain dado, and a coved bressumer enriched with small angels and fleurons.