Church Of St John The Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist is a parish church dating to 1853-54, built in the Gothic Revival style by William Butterfield for William Henry Dawnay, seventh Viscount Downe, and constructed by Charles Ward of Lincoln. It was restored in 1887, which included the addition of a new vestry, an organ, and a screen. The church is built of red brick in English bond, with sandstone ashlar dressings, and has a Welsh slate roof with wooden shingles to the spire.

The architectural layout features a 5-bay aisled nave with a west tower, a north porch, a south chimney with a later boiler-house extension, and a single-bay chancel with a vestry adjoining the north side. The south aisle has two pointed 2-light traceried windows, along with a single narrow square-headed window, and a tall projecting buttressed stack with iron straps to its upper corniced shaft. The north aisle features two twin pointed 2-light traceried windows. The west end is characterized by three large buttresses, with a pair of pointed 2-light traceried windows between them. The central buttress rises to a moulded ashlar corbel bearing a quatrefoiled relief panel and a string course, supporting a short, partly-projecting bell turret with a sill string course to a wooden-framed belfry. This belfry has single pointed arches on each face, and is topped with a short spire and wrought-iron weathercock. The chancel contains a small square-headed single-light south window, a pointed 3-light traceried east window, twin east lancets, and a pointed 2-light traceried north window to the vestry. All windows are fitted with geometric tracery, featuring pointed trefoiled lights and pierced trefoils or quatrefoils.

The tall, gabled porch has an open timber-framed entrance with 20th-century doors in a recessed pointed arch, beneath a tie-beam and a series of stepped trefoiled arches. Inside the porch, a pair of inner doors with strap hinges are within a pointed chamfered arch, leading to a roof with arch-braced collars. The church has a continuous steeply-pitched roof to the nave, aisles, and chancel, with exposed rafter ends throughout.

The interior is open to the chancel. Three-bay nave arcades display pointed chamfered arches on cylindrical piers and responds, continuing with similar, narrower single north and south openings to the chancel. A segmental-pointed recess (former fireplace) is situated in the north aisle, and a trefoiled piscina features a pierced cinquefoil. A dentilled brick cornice sits below the wall-plate. The roof is a nine-bay collared rafter structure with arch braces and king posts. Other features include a panelled wooden font cover, an octagonal ashlar font on a carved pedestal with trefoiled and quatrefoiled panels to the bowl, and an octagonal wooden pulpit. The floor is tiled in red and black Minton tiles in the nave and chancel, with red, black, and yellow tiles in the sanctuary, some bearing the Downe crest or monogram. The church is contemporary with the neighbouring vicarage and school, and shares similarities with buildings at nearby Hensall and Cowick. Pollington church uniquely retains its dramatic chimney among these comparable structures.