Church Of St John The Divine

The Church of St John the Divine was built between 1899 and 1901 by Austin and Paley. It is constructed of snecked sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, with roofs of sandstone slates. A pyramidal aluminium roof covers the crossing tower and porch. The church consists of a nave with a clerestory, north and south aisles, a south porch, a north doorway, a crossing tower, a south transept, a north vestry, and a chancel. The windows have Perpendicular tracery. A four-light west window is flanked by buttresses with offsets. The clerestory has five bays with four-light windows under segmental heads, and the aisle windows are of two and three lights under flat heads. The south porch features a carved niche above a moulded pointed doorway and a gable parapet with a cross finial. The crossing tower was originally planned to be taller; the projection for the staircase is now capped with a bellcote. The south window of the transept has two lights with blind tracery panels above and below a doorway set against a buttress. The south chancel windows are both of two lights with circles of flowing tracery below flat heads. The interior reveals the exposed sandstone construction. The nave arcades have five bays plus a narrow western bay, with pointed arches consisting of two chamfered orders, octagonal piers without caps, and corbelled shafts supporting the outer arch orders. The open timber nave roof has queen-post trusses alternating with arch-braced collar trusses, with cusped wind braces. The pointed and chamfered crossing arches are carried on corbelled shafts. A low wall made of brown-veined alabaster divides the crossing from the nave, incorporating a carved pulpit to the south. Above the chancel is a boarded barrel roof with a king-post truss supported by gilded angel corbels, and painted monograms within circles in the panels. The communion rails feature turned balusters with carved tracery and vine scroll decoration. The choir stalls also have carved tracery decoration.