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

Parish Church of St John the Baptist

This is a parish church of the Church of England, largely dating from the 14th century but incorporating fabric and arch fragments from the early 12th century. The building stands on the north side of Widford Ware Road.

The church was substantially restored in 1887–8, probably by G E Pritchett (a framed plan survives in the vestry). During this campaign the south porch and vestry adjoining the church were added and the roof was rebuilt. The chancel roof was painted in 1881–3 by Miss F C Hadsley Gosselin. The spire was rebuilt and the vestry was heightened to serve as an organ chamber in 1890 by J (or G) Slater BA of London. A new vestry was added off the nave in 1897–8 by J T Micklewaite.

The walls are constructed of flint rubble with clunch dressings, Barnack stone used for the tower, and knapped flint for the 19th-century vestry and organ chamber. The south porch is timber-framed with an open gabled roof. The church has a slender octagonal copper-sheathed spire. The building comprises an unaisled nave and a narrower rectangular chancel now under a continuous steep 19th-century roof with overhanging eaves.

The west tower is 3-storeyed and unbuttressed, with battlements and a rectangular stair projection on the south rising to the middle stage. A projection on the north wall of the nave conceals a rood-stair inside.

In the nave are two-light southeast and northeast windows of around 1350, with a copy added at the southwest in 1871. The south doorway and the door on the north to the vestry date to around 1370 and retain 13th-century ironwork. A 12th-century chevron arch stone is inset over the south door. The roof reuses cambered tie beams with hollow chamfers and soffit mortices for wall-posts and arched braces. A seven-sided 19th-century waggon roof with moulded battens sits above. An octagonal stone font of around 1420 has bossed and panelled decoration. A small 15th-century plastered piscina with a shelf survives at the southeast.

The lower part of the tower contains a wide 15th-century arch, a 14th-century west door of two moulded orders, and a two-light traceried window above. A small pointed doorway leads to the stair. The ceiling is formed of heavy chamfered beams with a central square panel.

In the chancel are two-light Perpendicular windows of the 15th century in each side wall. A 14th-century sedilia or tomb recess is set in the south wall. A credence table at the southeast is formed from a 12th-century carved cushion capital on a turned plain shaft, possibly from an altar, assembled in 1879. Fine medieval wall paintings survive: on the north wall is Christ of the Apocalypse sitting on a rainbow with a sword, dating to around 1300, and flanking the east window are 14th-century saints depicted as a knight and a bishop or abbot wearing a chasuble and mitre. The three-light traceried east window is 19th-century with stained glass of 1894, attributed to Burlison & Grylls, commemorating John Eliot, the 'Apostle to the Indians', who was born in the parish in the 17th century. His Bible for the Massachusetts Indians was printed by Samuel Green in 1661.

The church is associated with the writer Charles Lamb, whose grandmother Mary Field was a housekeeper at nearby Blakesware. Her grave lies in the churchyard, and the church is described in Lamb's poem The Grandame.

This is a small medieval church, little altered, with many features of special interest. It is of outstanding interest for its medieval wall paintings and literary associations. It stands on the edge of the precipitous valley of the River Ash to the north and is an important landscape feature, particularly when viewed from the park of Blakesware. From the south it forms part of a picturesque group of buildings in this part of the Conservation Area.