Parish Church Of St John The Baptist (Church Of England)

Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Cottered

This is a parish church of mid-14th-century date, possibly incorporating earlier fabric, with 15th-, 16th- and 18th-century alterations and additions. It was restored and re-seated in 1886. The Lady Chapel was restored in 1954, and some minor interior alterations were carried out in the late 20th century.

The church is built of rubble walling with flint facings and Clunch dressings, some now replaced in limestone and red brick, with later repair work in red brick and render. The roof coverings are lead sheet to the nave and spire, with plain tile work to the chancel and porch.

The plan comprises a west tower with spire, a nave with a south porch, and a chancel with a Lady Chapel and vestry along the north side of the chancel.

The exterior features a three-stage tower without buttresses, topped with an embattled parapet and a slender octagonal spire. The tower has a restored east door and a tall two-light east window above it. A clock and small window light the middle stage, with larger cusped bellchamber openings above. The south porch has a gable parapet and a dripmould to its arched entrance, with a two-light window on each side wall. The tall, wide four-bay nave has stepped buttresses and tall two and three-light transomed windows, with the window west of the porch having a flat head and those to the east having shallow arched heads. The rectangular chancel extends three bays and has two Perpendicular windows on its south wall, one set in a 15th-century opening. A blocked doorway between these windows has a small quatrefoil window above. The Lady Chapel to the north of the chancel features two wide 15th-century traceried windows and a 15th-century west doorway.

Inside, the 14th-century tower arch has three chamfered orders, with only the innermost having caps and bases to the jambs. A graffito of a postmill is scratched on the north jamb. The nave features a six-bay 15th-century arch-braced king-post roof of low pitch with moulded purlins meeting moulded demi-principals in foliate bosses. The north wall of the nave displays a large 15th-century polychrome mural of St Christopher in a landscape of roads and villages. Opposite hangs a painting of the Royal Arms purchased in 1712. In the north-east corner are openings from an external turret enclosing the rood stair, together with a 14th-century piscina and a fine grey Derbyshire crinoidal limestone font of 1739 with a gadrooned bowl on a baluster stem and octagonal base. The south porch doorway features a fine 15th-century carved oak door with panelling and embattled rail. The organ, dating to around 1830, is by Flight & Son. Two hatchments of the Soames family hang on either side of the early 14th-century chancel arch, which has two moulded orders with clustered shafts and moulded caps and bases. The chancel roof comprises three bays with arch-braced collar trusses rising from cambered tie beams with traceried spandrels. The east bay is boarded with painted ribs, and the three-light east window dates to around 1866. A 14th-century piscina and sedilia under a moulded arch are set within the south wall of the chancel, whilst the north wall has a 15th-century arcaded opening into the Lady Chapel, now infilled with a late 20th-century glazed timber screen and doors. The chapel has a cinquefoil cusped opening into the nave with 14th-century jambs but a 19th-century head, and a 15th-century piscina in the south wall. The chapel roof timbers also appear to be 15th-century. The vestry is entered from the chancel and lit by a two-light 16th-century cusped window with ferramenta supporting the stained glass. Its north wall has a small door with original ironwork. The chancel floor is covered in encaustic tiles. Medieval stained glass fragments survive in the heads of the nave north windows, and the three-light Crucifixion scene in the east window of 1886 is by Clayton and Bell. The two-light window in the south wall of the chancel is by Morris & Co.

The monuments include an inscription brass in the chapel to Litton Pulter of 1608. 17th-century heraldic inscribed ledger stones in the chancel commemorate the Forester and Pulter families. On the chancel south wall are a monument to Margaret Forester of 1757 with marble lectern, rococo cartouche and winged skull, and a monument to the Reverend Angel Chauncy of 1762 as a marble aedicule with achievement in the form of a draped urn. On the north wall is a rococo marble cartouche to Martha Forester of 1755, and a Neo-Classical monument to the Reverend Anthony Trollope, grandfather of the novelist. The wooden panelled pulpit is a 20th-century acquisition from St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch.