Church Of St John The Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist is a church dating from 1856-7, designed by S S Teulon. It is constructed of red brick in English bond, with black brick and limestone ashlar details, and has a slate roof with a concrete tile roof to the porch. The church is in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style. The design includes a west tower incorporating a porch to the south, a 5-bay nave, an apsidal chancel, and an organ chamber/vestry on the north side.

The church has a chamfered plinth and cill band. The short tower has buttresses at its junction with the nave. It features a 2-light north window with trefoil-headed lights divided by an ashlar shaft and pierced quatrefoil above, and a taller 3-light west window with foliate capitals, surmounted by a large sunk trefoil containing three blocked trefoils and a central roundel. A stepped brick Lombard frieze runs along the eaves. The pyramidal roof is topped with a pinnacle, and there is an octagonal chimney/turret with decorative brickwork corbelled-out from the north-west angle.

The porch has buttresses flanking a trefoil-headed outer door, with moulded ashlar imposts and a blocked brick roundel above. It includes a 4-bay blind arcade with shafts between trefoil-headed openings, and a tumbled brick gable with stone coping and kneelers. The inner door is pointed and chamfered, with three orders and a board door with decorative wrought-iron strap hinges. The nave has 2-light windows with dividing shafts and pierced roundels above. The chancel has lancet windows and three 2-light, trefoil-headed apse windows with pierced quatrefoils above. All openings have ashlar cills and pointed brick relieving arches; those to the apse, tower and porch have ashlar blocks at the cusps.

Inside the church, the tower is open to the nave and chancel, with a pointed chamfered tower arch on stepped corbels. The interior features polychrome brick decoration: yellow walls with a red diaper pattern in the chancel, a cross pattern in the nave, and bands in the tower; the window arches are also polychrome. There is a polychrome encaustic tile floor. The roof is an open king-post roof with trusses supported on corbels and raking struts to the collars. An octagonal font has coloured encaustic tile panels. 19th-century stained glass is present in the south and east windows.