Church Of St John The Divine

Church of St John the Divine

Parish church, 1853-55, designed by E.H. Shellard. Sandstone ashlar with emphatically pointed mortar joints and slate roofs. The church comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a west steeple with a porch on its north side, a chancel with an attached north organ-house and south chapel, and a vestry adjoining the chapel. The architecture is in the Decorated Gothic style.

The tall three-stage tower forms the dominant feature, rising from a moulded plinth with string course and set-back buttresses. It contains a small two-light west window and a cusped lancet to the second stage. Large diamond clock-faces occupy the north and south sides. The belfry stage has two windows on each side, all fitted with stone louvres and crocketed gablets. A cornice with prominent gargoyles supports a parapet with corner pinnacles linked by short flying buttresses to smaller pinnacles that flank the tall octagonal spire. The spire displays two-light gableted lucarnes at its base and smaller lucarnes at two levels above.

The north side of the tower features an elaborate two-storey gabled porch. Its doorway is moulded in two orders beneath a hoodmould with large angel stops and a crocketed gablet containing mouchettes. The doorway is flanked by crocketed niches, and at first-floor level is a two-light window flanked by cusped blind windows.

The nave contains five full bays plus a half-bay at the east end, with buttresses finished as pinnacles on the parapet. Each full bay contains a pair of two-light clerestory windows, and the half-bay has one. Octagonal pinnacles finish the east end. The aisles have buttresses finished as gablets and large three-light windows with tracery in alternating patterns. The western bay of the south aisle has a cusped doorway.

The three-bay chancel has diagonal buttresses at the east end finished with pinnacles, a large five-light east window, a three-light window on the north side, and a parapet with zig-zag open-work. Attached parallel to the north side of the chancel is a tall two-bay organ house with three-light windows in the north side, a large four-light east window, similar parapet work, and corner pinnacles beneath a steeply pitched roof. The three-bay south chapel, adjoining the south side of the chancel, has buttresses, a four-light east window, and three-light windows on the south side mostly obscured by the parallel vestry. The vestry has a doorway at the west end, a traceried three-light window at the east end, and coupled lancets in the sides.

Windows throughout feature reticulated tracery in two-centred arched openings with hoodmoulds bearing figured stops. Numerous crocketed pinnacles punctuate the rooflines.

Interior

The arcades consist of five-and-a-half bays with quatrefoil piers carrying two-centred arches moulded in two orders, each with hoodmoulds linked by figured stops. The piers have nobbly leaf capitals. The half-bay arches die into the chancel wall. The chancel arch and three-bay arcades follow similar styling but with moulded annular caps to the columns and three orders of moulding to the arches. A clerestory of four plus four cusped lights lights the organ house.

Both nave and chancel are roofed with hammer-beam trusses. A gallery at the west end of the nave is carried on large timber girders with mouchette tracery and has cusped blind arcaded panelling to its front. Formerly similar galleries occupied the aisles, but these were removed in the 1960s, leaving only their corbels visible on the piers.

Monuments and Fittings

The chancel contains a wall tablet to Dame Mary Hoghton (died 1719/20). Three monumental slabs to other Hoghton family members are located at the east end of the nave, dated 1719/20, 1768, and 1772.

In the chapel stands a large wall monument to Reverend Roger Carus Wilson (died 1839), elaborately carved in Gothic style and including relief carvings of five Preston churches built during his incumbency.

The tower contains a Gothic tomb-recess to Thomas Starkie Shuttleworth (died 1819) and monuments to various civic dignitaries.

The church was altered after its original construction, with documented modifications to the gallery arrangements in the 1960s.