Church Of St John The Evangelist

The Church of St John the Evangelist is a church constructed between 1890 and 1892 by H.J. Austin of Austin and Paley. It is built of sandstone with Yorkshire stone dressings, and has a roof of green Cumberland slates, with the aisles having low-pitched lead-covered roofs. The church comprises a nave and chancel under a single roof, with north and south aisles, a south transept, a tower over the north transept, and side offices to the chancel. The building is large and imposing, and designed in the early Perpendicular style.

The five-bay nave has ten square-headed, two-light traceried clerestory windows, and a large, transomed five-light west window with intersecting tracery. The aisles, treated as four bays, showcase buttresses and arched, two-light windows with tracery in the heads and hoodmoulds, with a gabled porch to the first bay on the south side, and a diagonal porch in the angle with the south transept. The buttressed south transept features a very large five-light window with Perpendicular and curvilinear tracery. The chancel has a very large six-light window with Perpendicular tracery. The embattled tower, positioned over the north transept, has diagonal buttresses rising to short octagonal corner turrets, each finished with large crocketed pinnacles.

The interior is lofty and spacious, lined with red Rainhill stone, providing imaginative views. The five-bay arcades feature moulded arches set on alternately round and octagonal columns with moulded caps. A high chancel arch is composed of two orders of moulding, with the north pier incorporating trefoil-headed panels; the roof is of arch-braced double collar-beam construction. A Gothic carved wooden chancel screen and a panelled screen divide the north transept. Within the first bay of the chancel are canopied choir stalls, with tall, elaborately-carved canopies incorporating statues beneath individual crocketed canopies; some lower stalls have been relocated to the nave. A stepped, carved stone reredos is present, along with a set of pews in the nave, some of which have been moved to the chancel.

The site, structure, and endowments were largely contributed by the Brooks family of Crawshaw Hall. This notable design carefully utilizes the hillside setting. The lofty interior contains fine and complete fittings.