Church Of St John The Baptist Including Wall To Guildhall

Church of St John the Baptist including Wall to Guildhall, Henley-in-Arden

This is a Grade I listed church of around 1450, with a slightly later north aisle and an earlier west tower. It was restored in 1856 and 1900.

The building is constructed of coursed dressed lias stone and coursed lias rubble with ashlar dressings, and has an old tile roof. The plan consists of a single-vessel chancel and four-bay nave, with a west tower and north aisle.

The chancel features a five-light east window with renewed Perpendicular tracery and a hoodmould with head stops, and is supported by diagonal buttresses. It has coped gables with crosses. A small nineteenth-century gabled vestry to the north has a tile roof and a two-light straight-headed window.

The north aisle has a flying buttress to its west end, a cornice, parapet and coped gable. Its windows are three-light openings with no hoods; the eastern window has renewed tracery.

The south elevation of the nave has a deep plinth, off-set buttresses and diagonal buttresses, and a plain cornice. Its windows are three-light openings with renewed tracery and foliated hood stops.

The west end features a shallow-gabled porch with a plinth, panelled diagonal buttresses and a cornice with crenellated parapet. The entrance has continuous mouldings and a depressed arch with a hood decorated with beast stops, crockets and finials, beneath twentieth-century paired battened doors. The inner entrance has king and queen headstops, crockets and paired nine-fielded-panel doors. The south side of the porch has cusped panelling flanking a two-light straight-headed window. A renewed four-light west window has a hood with woman and green man stops, crockets and a fleuron.

The three-stage west tower has a plinth and diagonal buttresses ending in bases for removed pinnacles, and a two-light west window. It has triple-chamfered cusped lights to the south and west with a continuous hoodmould. The third stage has similar straight-headed lights. The top stage has two-light transomed bell-openings; the lower lights have stone infill and the upper ones are louvred. The south side has stair lights and a lozenge-face clock. A top cornice and nineteenth- or twentieth-century crenellated parapet complete the tower.

The interior has a nave and chancel with a roof featuring arch-braced cambered tie beams on angel corbels, queen struts to arch-braced cambered collars, wind braces and coupled and ashlared common rafters. The north arcade has wide shallow four-centred arches on tall octagonal piers; the east respond and west corbel are in the form of winged beasts (comparable to Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon). The chancel has a north door. South and east windows have head stops with large and elaborate headgear. The aisle has stop-chamfered members to the roof and an east window above the entrance. Two north windows have stops similar to the arcade corbel, and the north door is set inside-out. A double-chamfered tower arch has a nineteenth-century screen.

The fittings include twentieth-century panelling to the sanctuary, simple stalls and a timber rail. An early sixteenth-century pulpit has a renewed stone base and panels with blind tracery over linen-fold and a renewed brattished cornice. A plain octagonal font has a shallow seventeenth- or eighteenth-century bowl. Most other fittings date to the nineteenth century.

Monuments include a marble wall tablet to Simon Kempson (died 1719) and Margaret (died 1699), with a panel, apron, side pilasters ending in scrolls and a crest with armorial bearing. Two early eighteenth-century floor slabs are present, one to Robert Clayton with armorial bearing. A brass First World War memorial lists causes of death.

The stained glass includes a window of 1879 in the east end; an aisle east window of 1865 with a figure of Hope set in grisaille; a west window of 1882 with a pictorial Nativity; and south windows of around 1856 with decorative roundels set in grisaille.

A subsidiary feature is a wall connecting the north-west angle of the tower with the Guildhall, which has a four-centred entrance with a plank door.

The church was built as a chapel of ease to the parish church at Wooton Wawen and was first mentioned in 1367. The north aisle was used by the Guild of the Holy Trinity, St John the Evangelist and St John the Baptist, first mentioned in 1408. The church is believed to have contained Hanoverian Royal Arms on the tower.