Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is a ruined former parish church, primarily dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, with later additions including a north chapel, south porch, and chancel. The building is constructed of coursed sandstone rubble and sandstone ashlar, and is roofless except for stone slate coverings to the tower. It comprises a four-bay nave, two-bay chancel, west tower, south nave aisle, north chapel to the nave, and south porch.

The tower dates to the late 14th or early 15th century. It is embattled and rises through three stages, with a rectangular newel projection to the east end of the north side featuring loops to the west face. Diagonal buttresses support the north-west and south-west corners, and stages are divided by string courses. The first stage below the lowest string consists of thinly coursed rubble with a segmentally-headed door on the south side and a chamfered loop with a central iron bar to the west face. The second stage is ashlar with a single lancet centred to both the south and west sides. The top stage contains square-headed trefoiled and ogeed paired lights to the bell-chamber on the north, south, and west sides, with a single light of the same design on the east side. The string above dividing the top stage from the embattled parapet has two projecting waterspouts to the north, south, and west faces (the west waterspout on the south side is missing). The newel is roofed pyramidally.

The nave contains two windows each of two lights with Y-tracery on the north wall west of the north chapel, and to their west, beyond a dislodged buttress, a large window with a round head, possibly of the 18th century. The north chapel has a re-set 2-light window with Y-tracery in its north wall and a chamfered lancet in the east wall. The chancel features a 2-centred east window formerly of two lights with a later label and stops above. The east window of the south wall is round-headed, perhaps of the 18th century. The west window beyond a low priests' doorway has a 2-centred head with two lights with ogee heads and sexfoil tracery above.

The south aisle contains at its east end a large 3-light window with trefoil heads to each light and ogeed quatrefoil tracery above. Three matching windows in the south wall and at the west end are similar but of two lights, as is the westernmost window of the chancel. The south porch dates to the early 17th century and features a round-headed outer arch with kneelers to the south verges. The inner arch, above the former south door, is also 17th-century with a depressed elliptical head and corbels (noted as Ionic brackets in the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales).

The interior contains a four-bay arcade separating the nave from the south aisle, with octagonal columns and responds carrying round arches with double chamfers. The nave floor has been raised, leaving a chamfered 2-centred doorway into the tower half-buried. Similarly, the large 2-centred chamfered arch to the north chapel now springs from about two feet above ground level.

The chancel contains a piscina with inner and outer centred heads and a square drain. The interior of the priest's doorway has shouldered jambs rising to a square head. Several illegible floor slabs survive, and there is a brick chest tomb with stone hipped capping for Watson Joseph Thornton, Rector, who died in 1855. The south aisle contains an illegible early 19th-century wall monument on the east wall and, on the south wall near the junction with the east wall, an early 17th-century wall monument framed by Ionic columns and strapwork. On the adjacent south window cill is a tapered slab with an intersecting geometrical pattern.

The church was abandoned in 1864 for the new Christchurch due to flooding from The Gamber, a nearby brook.