Parish Church Of St John The Evangelist

Parish church of St John the Evangelist, built in 1857 with aisles added in 1957. The architect is unknown.

The church is constructed of rock-faced gritstone with a slate roof. It comprises an aisled nave with a lower and narrower chancel, a west spire, south porch, south organ chamber, and north vestry.

The exterior is built in the Decorated Gothic style. The nave's west front retains its original detail, featuring a full-height central buttress supporting an octagonal arcaded bellcote below a short spirelet. The buttress is flanked by single-light windows with trefoil tracery lights and narrow single-light windows in the gable. The aisles, added in 1957, display minimal Gothic detailing typical of that period. The south side of the nave has three four-light mullioned windows with a porch at the left end. The north aisle, which is rendered in roughcast, has two similar windows and a 1957 link to the 1989 church hall. The chancel features diagonal buttresses, a three-light east window, two south windows with trefoil tracery lights, and a similar window on the north side. The south organ chamber has a pointed east doorway and a segmental-headed south doorway, with its roof concealed behind a parapet. The north vestry is a lean-to structure.

The interior contains a four-bay nineteenth-century nave roof with arched-brace trusses on corbels. The chancel arch is double-chamfered with the inner order on corbels, and a 1957 piscina is positioned to its right. The chancel has a plastered polygonal roof. The nave arcades, comprising four bays to the south and three to the north, are low-key in character with square piers chamfered at the corners and segmental double-chamfered arches, all plastered, as are the walls. Parquet floors date to 1957, though the sanctuary retains a nineteenth-century tile floor.

The west gallery, built in 1957, has a panelled front. The plain octagonal font is nineteenth-century. The pulpit, designed in the late twentieth century by Derek Scattergood, is polygonal and incorporates a Chi-Rho monogram. Scattergood also designed the choir stalls in the nave. The chancel contains benches with fielded-panel backs and ends, probably dating from after 1957 when the chancel was converted into a chapel. A rood beam and figures date from approximately 1938. Beneath the sill of the east window is a strip of carved wood dated 1698 and decorated with serpents; its provenance is unknown but was placed there after 1957. The crucifixion east window probably dates to 1859. Two panels from a circa 1901 Nativity window remain in the south aisle. A brass war memorial plaque commemorates the 1914–18 period, and in the north aisle is a carved Virgin and Child in a niche, a memorial to Robert Clark who died in 1917 at Passchendaele.

The church was originally a small aisleless parish church built in 1857. Post-war suburban development necessitated enlargement. Aisles were added in 1957 when a west gallery was also added and the sanctuary was relocated to the east end of the nave, leaving the original chancel as a chapel. Further interior reorderings occurred from the 1970s onwards. The porch was added in 2007.