Hospital Of St John

The Hospital of St John, now a convent and school, was constructed between 1840 and around 1847. It was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and forms part of an important complex of buildings commissioned by the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. The building is constructed of ashlar with distinctive edged herringbone tooling, and has shaped tile roofs with plain tile bands and crested ridge tiles. Ashlar ridge stacks feature octagonal shafts and crenellated caps.

The hospital is composed of three attached ranges grouped around a roughly square courtyard. The entrance range, aligned north-south and facing west, includes a central, two-storey gabled porch with diagonal buttresses. The right side of this range has two storeys and an attic with storey bands, while the left has one storey and an attic, incorporating a single-storey lean-to gallery. The facade is divided into seven bays, punctuated by buttresses. Ground-floor windows are square-headed, with one to three cinquefoil-headed lights. First-floor and attic windows to the right are mullioned, with two lights; cambered attic windows to the left have two cinquefoil-headed lights, all within gabled dormers. A central pointed doorway is situated above an oriel window.

The left-hand range is a single-storey, three-bay structure with three-light windows and buttresses marking the bay divisions. This terminates to the left with the three-storey tower of the warden’s house. The tower has two-storey buttresses flanking a central doorway with a four-centred arch. The Chapel, now the Roman Catholic Church of St John the Baptist, is set back to the left.

The right-hand range comprises a main block of two storeys and an attic, with six bays. A lower, two-storey bay is attached to the left, and a two-storey gabled tower is attached to the right, surmounted by a bellcote with a pyramidal steeple. Bay divisions are marked by buttresses. The ground-floor windows of the main block have three ogee-headed lights with short supermullions rising to a flat arch. Similar two-light first-floor windows have cambered arches. Hipped attic dormers are present. The interior includes stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.