Catholic Church Of St John The Baptist

Catholic Church of St John the Baptist

This Roman Catholic Church dates to circa 1840 and was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. It is built in the Perpendicular Gothic style and constructed of ashlar with edged herringbone tooling, with a plain tile roof featuring crested ridge tiles.

The church comprises a four-bay nave, three-bay chancel, north-east oratory, and south-east chapel. Buttresses mark each bay division and sit at each corner with diagonal emphasis. The exterior is characterized by pointed and four-centred arches with moulded surrounds and hood moulds terminating in decorative stops including foliated designs and carved heads.

The west elevation features a pointed doorway with a moulded surround and hood mould with foliated stops, surmounted by a four-centred window with wave moulded surround. This window contains two lights to each side of a central blind arch with a nodding ogee arch above a statue of a bishop, and its hood mould terminates in heads depicting a king and a bishop. An octagonal bellcote with a scaled pointed stone roof and cross surmounts the nave. The nave's north and south elevations are lit by square-headed windows of three cinquefoil-headed lights with sunken spandrels. The chancel features a pointed east window of three cinquefoil-headed lights with Perpendicular tracery and a hood mould terminating in angels bearing shields. Additional pointed windows contain two cinquefoil-headed lights with short supermullions and deeply hollowed surrounds. The north-east oratory has a north window with trefoil-headed lights and a lean-to roof with stone tiles.

The interior is sumptuously decorated with extensive painted decoration. A high pointed chancel arch with moulded surround divides the spaces. The nave roof features two pairs of purlins, a ridge piece and collar with curved struts extending to the principals, and three tiers of paired curved wind braces. The chancel roof incorporates arch-braced collars with moulded braces springing from octagonal posts with capitals standing on corbels carved as angels bearing shields. It has one pair of purlins and a ridge piece, two tiers of paired curved wind braces, and brattished wall plate and purlins.

The north oratory, entered by a pointed doorway with nook shafts and a four-centred arch to the east, adjoins the chancel. The south chapel, similarly positioned, is entered by a four-centred doorway with panelled spandrels and has a matching four-centred arch to the east.

The church contains significant fittings including an octagonal stone font; a pulpit in the south-east corner of the nave, quarter-octagonal on corbels; four brass chandeliers in the nave; and benches with elaborate poppy heads and backs decorated with openwork tracery. An elaborately carved crucifix is suspended over the sanctuary. The marble altar comprises five bays with cusped heads—the central and outer ones slim, the other two wide—with the central niche containing a figure of the Virgin and the outer niches figures of two of the Apostles, the remaining niches containing figures of angels. A nine-bay alabaster reredos features trefoiled ogee arch niches containing figures, except the central one before which the cross stands. Niches flank the east window, each containing a figure with cusped arches and nodding ogee details. A piscina with a trefoil ogee arch sits to the right of the altar.

Two monuments to the sixteenth and seventeenth Earls of Shrewsbury, who died in 1852 and 1856 respectively, are positioned one to each side of the altar. Stained glass is particularly notable throughout the church, especially the east window by Thomas Willement depicting the Madonna and Child and John the Baptist. Pugin's original screen has been removed and is now held at Birmingham Museum.

The church was built as the chapel to the Hospital of St. John and is attached to its north-western angle, forming part of an important group of buildings by Pugin constructed during the 1840s for the Sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury.