Church Of St John

Church of St John, Lancaster

This church was consecrated in 1755 and is built of sandstone ashlar with a slate roof. The structure comprises a nave with a semicircular apse, a west tower, and a south porch. The nave consists of five bays with projecting quoins and a cornice below a parapet with moulded coping.

The tall windows throughout have architraves and semicircular heads with keystones and impost blocks. On the north side, the lower part of the west bay is occupied by a doorway with an architrave, cornice, and pulvinated frieze; the window above, though with a higher sill, matches the other nave windows. The doorway is now blocked and contains a window. On the south side, the east bay similarly features doors with raised and fielded panels. The west bay contains a single-storey porch in matching style, with an architrave and a pediment rising above a cornice, with a round-headed window above. The apse has two curved windows and is flanked by windows matching those of the side walls. The west wall contains similar windows on either side of the tower.

The west tower was added by Thomas Harrison in 1784. It is of three stages. The lowest stage has lunette windows to the north and south, with a rectangular window below on the north side. On the west side are doors with raised and fielded panels in an architrave with pulvinated frieze and cornice. A tablet above records that the tower was built from a legacy of Thomas Bowes. The middle stage has clock faces on three sides, with the western one in a moulded recess. The upper stage, above a dentilled cornice, has rectangular louvred bell openings within aedicules with Tuscan pilasters and pediments rising from an upper cornice. The tower is capped by a rotunda with rectangular openings between engaged Tuscan columns carrying a curved entablature with triglyph frieze. Set back behind this is a drum decorated with swags, carrying a stone spirelet.

The south porch was added in 1873.

Interior

The interior features galleries on three sides with fronts of oak raised and fielded panels, carried on square panelled columns with Ionic columns rising at gallery level to support plaster cornices. The ceiling between the cornices curves upwards as a barrel vault. The central part of the west gallery front breaks forward with curved sides and is carried on two timber fluted Doric columns. Below the front of the west gallery a glazed screen has been added. The gallery is reached by two staircases with turned newels and ramped handrails.

The east end was re-ordered in the 1870s and again in the 1920s, when a north chapel and south vestry were created by removing the eastern bays of both galleries. The gallery fronts run through these spaces, with plaster walls pierced by lunettes within these bays at gallery level and walls of timber and glass at the lower level.

The nave contains oak box pews arranged in two double rows. The third and fourth pews from the front on the south side were the Corporation Pew and are arranged as one with a seat in the middle. The pews curve at the east end where the central aisle widens, originally to allow space for the pulpit, which was replaced by the present ironwork pulpit in 1875. The raised sanctuary area is also an alteration, though turned mahogany communion rails survive from the original scheme. The box pews were removed from the galleries during the twentieth century, but the west organ survives in its original mahogany case. The original organ dated from 1785 but was rebuilt in 1868, replaced in 1898, and rebuilt in 1939 and 1992.

Within the tower the architrave and cornice of the original west nave doorway can be seen. The clock mechanism, supplied by Bell and Atkinson of Lancaster and dated 1886, occupies a glass case in the middle stage.

Stained Glass

The apse wall is painted with the Ten Commandments and the Creed. Its two windows contain glass of circa 1870 with roundels depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The north chapel contains two windows of circa 1895, probably by Shrigley and Hunt.

Alterations of circa 1920 were undertaken. The church was vested in the Redundant Churches Fund in 1983.