Church Of St John The Evangelist

613-1/8/57

STOKE ON TRENT, HANLEY, TOWN ROAD (west side)

Church of St John the Evangelist

02-OCT-51

II*

Church, now disused. 1788-90. Additions of 1872 by W. Palmer. Brick with stone dressings and slate roof with ridge cresting. West tower, nave and aisles, chancel. Four-stage tower with blind lower openings and housing for clock above. Bell chamber lights and castellated parapet, the castellations made up of panels of cast iron, bolted together, and with the bottom flanges and side end flanges bolted to supporting masonry. Neo-classical north doorways in east and west of north wall. Four lower windows, and six in clerestory above, some with contemporary cast iron windows with intersecting tracery. The frames incorporate horizontal bars of wrought iron to support the fixings for leaded light. Square-ended chancel with shallow polygonal apse: with the vestries to east of aisles, a later addition.

INTERIOR: Most fittings and fixtures now missing, but gallery with panelled fascia supported on slender cast-iron columns with plain capitals. Exposed roof trusses, supported by massive tie beams, with later casings, and added struts, and diagonally boarded panels to undersides of roof slopes. East window with painted glass of c.1830 depicting `Our Lord Blessing'. The figure of Christ is clad in purple robes, and standing beneath a Gothic canopy. Flanking windows also c.1830. Bell chamber with peal of 10 bells, the original peal of 8 bells cast by E. Arnold of Leicester and installed in 1791, supplemented by two additions in 1891, and all re-cast and rehung from a contemporary bellframe in 1923.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: The building is of exceptional interest because of the presence of early cast-iron structural and decorative components, notably the gallery columns, the window frames and the castellations. It is thought that these components are some of the earliest to have been used in any type of building in Britain, only those in St James', Liverpool having been identified as being earlier (1774-5).

Listing NGR: SJ8835947868