Church Of St John Evangelist

Church of St John Evangelist

An Anglican church built in 1851–2 to designs by architect Ewan Christian and constructed by the builders George and Joseph Lilley of Derby. The church is designed in the Decorated style.

The building is constructed of irregularly shaped red sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, and roofed in plain clay tiles. The plan consists of a chancel, four-bay nave, south aisle, and a tower with broach spire positioned at the west end. A small single-storey extension stands at the south-east corner.

The west tower features diagonal buttresses and a north-west buttress that incorporates an internal stair turret. The principal doorway is a pointed arch with moulded decoration springing from shafts with foliate capitals. Belfry windows have two cusped lights with louvres and a quatrefoil above. The stone broach spire displays two tiers of lucarnes. The nave and chancel have buttresses with set-offs, and a stringcourse runs at window sill level. Windows to the north and south elevations feature varied Decorated tracery. The north wall of the chancel is blind except for a priest's door with a Caernarvon arch. A Geometric five-light window has carved heads to the hoodmould terminals. The twentieth-century flat-roofed extension occupies the south-east corner.

Internally, the walls are ashlar masonry extensively decorated with painted biblical texts above the window arches on the north side and to the chancel. The chancel contains an alabaster reredos enriched with polished stones and a central cross. The south aisle has three octagonal piers, one cylindrical pier, and a quatrefoil-section pier at the east end with a foliage-carved capital. Encaustic tiles pave the sanctuary. A timber screen of open design closes off the west end of the nave. The tower's upper floor has been converted to a church office, accessed by a twentieth-century timber staircase in the west end of the south aisle.

There is no chancel arch; the division between nave and chancel is expressed through differences in roof design. The roof comprises eight bays with intermediate trusses of arch-braced design. Slender braces of the main trusses descend to stone corbels, moulded in the nave but carved with figures in the chancel. Chancel roof bays are more closely spaced than those of the nave. The roof has two tiers of purlins and is plastered behind the rafters. The south aisle has a scissor-braced roof of slender common rafters.

The interior retains numerous original fixtures and fittings. The stone pulpit is square in plan with canted corners and is richly carved with vine trails and inscriptions. The font has an octagonal bowl carved with quatrefoil symbols, an octagonal stem, and supporting pews with canted corners. Stained glass includes three high-quality windows by Lavers and Westlake in the south aisle, one signed and dated 1896, and a pulpit window signed by Jones and Willis of London dated 1907. A wall memorial set into the north wall of the chancel commemorates the first incumbent, with an inscription beneath a cusped arch flanked by marble shafts.