Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This Grade II* listed church on St John's Road in Epping was built between 1889 and 1909 by the renowned architect George Frederick Bodley, with later work completed by his practice Bodley and Hare after his death in 1907. The main body of the church—comprising the nave, chancel and south aisle—was constructed from 1889 to 1891. The tower was added in 1907-1909, and the north aisle and south porch were built in 1908, with some of this work being posthumous and completed under the partnership of C G Hare.

The church is constructed of Bath stone ashlar, with clay tile roofs covering the nave and chancel and lead-covered roofs on the aisles. The building draws stylistically on early fourteenth-century medieval architecture, which was characteristic of Bodley's approach to church design.

The most striking external feature is the three-stage tower, positioned tightly in the angle between the High Street and St John's Street. It is decorated with angle buttresses and carries a clock by Thwaites and Reed of Clerkenwell, which projects from the second stage over the High Street. The ground stage of the tower contains a recessed centrepiece with a two-light window flanked by buttresses and a pair of blind arches. The middle stage is notably plain, though the buttresses at this level contain sculpted figures beneath canopies. The belfry stage displays pairs of two-light windows with cusped lozenge tracery. The top of the tower features openwork battlements. On the west face of the tower at ground level stands a polygonal, embattled stair turret.

The east end of the chancel abuts directly onto the High Street and contains a large seven-light window. This window is blind below a transom due to the large reredos positioned internally, with highly ornate tracery above that combines Geometrical and Decorated forms with lavish reticulations and cusped circles. The remainder of the fenestration is largely conventional, comprising mostly three-light windows. The south aisle features flowing Decorated tracery, while the north aisle has pairs of mullions rising to each arch head. Two three-light Decorated windows are positioned at the west end. The aisles have low, plain parapets, and the building lacks a clerestory.

Internally, the walls are plastered and whitened. The arrangement is typical of Bodley's later churches, with tall, elegant arcades made possible by the absence of a clerestory. The nave and chancel form a single volume, divided by a screen rather than a structural wall. Similarly, the south aisle and south chapel are separated by a screen. The organ blocks the east end of the north aisle. The nave comprises five bays with quatrefoil piers featuring fillets on the main lobes and rolls and fillets in the hollows; the arches, capitals and bases are moulded. The chancel measures two-and-a-half bays with pairs of similar arches on either side. The roof covering the nave and chancel is of boarded wagon type, painted blue, with a text running along the wall-plate level.

The nave and chancel are separated by a fine vaulted rood screen designed by Bodley, featuring single-light divisions with delicate tracery in the heads and supporting a large and striking rood group. The screen between the south aisle and chapel is lower but similar in style, with a further screen dividing the chapel from the chancel. The chancel is dominated by a large continental-style triptych reredos, a type favoured by Bodley. This reredos dates from 1909 and is the work of Bodley and Hare. The central section depicts Christ in Majesty, the Last Supper and other scenes, with angel figures playing musical instruments on the wings. The tall organ case of 1892 rises to the wall plate and is a striking piece bearing florid pierced tracery-work. The polygonal wooden pulpit, of wine-glass type, dates from 1889 but was rebuilt in 1914; its figures stand beneath richly traceried canopies. The chancel stalls are relatively plain, while the nave and aisles are furnished with chairs. The font has an octagonal bowl with shields in recesses, standing on a base surrounded by Frosterley-type marble shafts.

The east window is a fine example of 1890 by Burlison and Grylls, one of Bodley's preferred makers. Two windows in the south chapel date from 1902 and the west window of the south aisle, both by C E Kempe. The north aisle contains a window of approximately 1909 by Gamon and Humphry.

A parish church stood at what is now Epping Upland, but a chapel is said to have occupied this site since at least 1397. The immediate predecessor of the present St John's was a chapel erected in 1832. Around 1886, Miss Elizabeth Horsley Whiteman offered £3000 towards a new church on condition that work commenced by 31 March 1890. Additional funding came from the Wythes family of Copped Hall, with Ernest James Wythes contributing £4000. The memorial stone was laid on 6 November 1889, and the church was dedicated on 8 April 1891. The tower was dedicated on 28 April 1909.

George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) was a key figure in nineteenth-century church-building. He was a pupil of George Gilbert Scott for five years from 1845 and remained with him until establishing independent practice in 1856. His early work is characterised by a muscular, taut style typical of the period, but in the early 1860s he reacted against what he perceived as the excesses of High Victorian architecture, helping lead the way towards more restrained versions of Gothic. The pivotal building in this transition was All Saints, Jesus Lane in Cambridge, built in 1863-4. In his architecture, Bodley aspired to what he termed "refinement," and many of his later buildings possess great elegance. St John's Church exemplifies this quality, representing the standard type of late Bodley church with fourteenth-century detail, a nave and chancel in a single volume, a wagon roof, high aisles extending to the east end, and no clerestory. As the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner noted, Epping was given "a church of remarkable dignity if not striking originality," with the tower representing the outstanding feature. St John's was completed near the end of Bodley's life. In 1907, he was joined as a partner by Cecil Hare (1875-1932) who, following Bodley's death in October that year, continued to work in the Bodleian manner.