Parish Church Of St John The Baptist

Church Street, Peterborough

This is a large and architecturally ambitious parish church built from 1402 on a new site in the market place, west of Peterborough Abbey. The church was begun in 1402 and consecrated in 1407, reusing materials from the earlier church of St John the Baptist that had stood to the east near Boongate (subject to flooding), and from the nave of the nearby chapel of St Thomas Becket near the abbey's west gate. The original church materials included twelfth-century worked stone. The north porch was added in 1473.

The church underwent significant changes in the early nineteenth century. Between 1818 and 1820, to strengthen the failing tower, the western arches were blocked and the window tracery was removed and replaced with Y-tracery, of which some fine examples survive towards the western ends of the aisles. At this time the tower spire was also removed. The windows were replaced and other works at the west end were carried out in 1819 with late Georgian iron railings (possibly dating to around 1819) erected around the church, featuring twisted posts and slender, spiked intermediate shafts.

In 1881–3 the church underwent substantial restoration to designs by the renowned Gothic architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97), designer of Truro Cathedral. This followed the fall of a tower pinnacle onto the north aisle roof. Pearson replaced much of the window tracery, including the blocked east window, rebuilt the clerestory and roofs, and removed the galleries. Further work in 1907–9 opened up the arches under the tower. Further replacement of the Y-tracery windows took place piecemeal in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The church is built of coursed stone rubble incorporating reused worked stone from the former churches. The plan comprises an aisled nave and chancel, with the chancel projecting one bay beyond the ends of the aisles. A western tower is set over the western bay of the nave, with the aisles extending past it.

The exterior is largely Perpendicular in appearance, though much of this is due to nineteenth-century restoration. The tall western tower features large four-light transomed bell openings and corner turrets with pinnacles, entirely renewed. A western door and window above light the base. The nave and chancel are roofed as one with an embattled parapet and three-light clerestory windows with square heads. The aisles and chancel chapels are roofed continuously with plain parapets. The aisle and chapel windows predominantly display nineteenth and twentieth-century Perpendicular-style tracery in various patterns, including the fine, large east window of 1881–3. Two windows towards the western ends of both aisles, however, retain very good intersecting Y-tracery of 1819 with the leading for the clear glazing following the pattern of the tracery. The outstanding early fifteenth-century south porch is two stories tall, with the lower part open and vaulted with good bosses, and the upper part containing two-light early fifteenth-century windows. It features a plain parapet with pinnacles and a heraldic beast said to be an antelope, with a stained glass window in the open lower section. The shallow, embattled north porch of 1473 displays carved waterspouts.

The interior is very large and spacious, entirely Perpendicular in style. The nave arcades are tall, with complex moulded arches on quatrefoil piers with moulded capitals and high, polygonal bases. The arches to the north and south chancel chapels are similar but simpler, and the chancel arch dies into the wall at a high level. The tower features north, south and east arches in Perpendicular style, with further arches dividing the penultimate and final western bays of each aisle, replacing early nineteenth-century blocking inserted to stabilise the tower.

Principal fixtures include a fifteenth-century polygonal font with quatrefoil and stylised roses, and a nineteenth-century font cover with crocketted arches. The pulpit has a traceried stone base with a timber traceried upper part. Extensive twentieth-century screenwork, installed between around 1915 and 1931, is executed in a consistent Arts-and-Crafts Gothic style with complex, delicate tracery and brattished cresting. The rood dates to 1938. An elaborate painted and gilded timber reredos, also 1938, displays carved figures under heavily traceried canopies. Benches of 1881–3 feature square, traceried ends and moulded top rails. The roofs are all nineteenth-century, executed in fifteenth-century style.

An elegant wall tablet by Flaxman commemorates William Squire (died 1826), depicting a draped male mourning figure leaning on a column. Several eighteenth-century wall monuments are also present, including monuments to members of the Wyldbore family. The monument to Matthew Wyldbore MP (died 1781) by Richard Hayward is a handsome Neoclassical composition of considerable ambition. Good nineteenth and twentieth-century stained glass is displayed throughout, including a window in the north aisle by Wailes of 1896. Two framed fragments of fifteenth-century vestments hang in the church. A vestment cupboard given to the church in 1931 is dated 1569 but was probably made up in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century from Spanish, German and other pieces. An angled stone war memorial set against the west wall depicts St. George and the dragon.

Historically, the original church of St John stood on another site to the east near Boongate, probably dating to the late eleventh century, but it was subject to flooding. In 1402 the parishioners were granted permission to build a new church on the present site in the market place. There was a proposal to demolish it during the Civil War. Galleries were added and the church refurnished in the eighteenth century, but by the early nineteenth century it was in poor condition. In 2009 the church was about to undergo reordering at the west end to create meeting and service areas, including the removal of some pews and screens, to designs by Julian Limentani of Marshall Sussons Architects.