Church Of St John The Baptist And St Felix

The Church of St John the Baptist and St Felix is a parish church constructed between 1894 and 1899 by Sir Arthur Blomfield, with completion in 1914. It is built of red brick with Bath stone dressings and tile roofs. The church comprises a south-west tower, an aisled nave, a south porch, a chancel, a north transept, and a south lady chapel.

The tower has four stages and a spire, featuring stepped angle buttresses, faceted stone spirelets, a stone parapet, and an octagonal stone spire. A stone gable with crocketed finials tops the south doorway, which has a moulded arched entrance. Paired lancet windows are present at the first stage and belfry, with clock faces on the south, east, and west sides. A stair tower is located on the north side, and quatrefoil lucarne openings are visible within the spire.

The nave, consisting of six bays, is articulated by buttressed brick pilaster strips alternating with clerestory windows. Aisle windows are lancets, singly or in groups of two or three. The clerestory windows are distinctive, with encircled cinquefoils alternating with sexfoils set in spherical triangles. The gabled south porch is of stone-dressed brick with a brick parapet, and features a doorway of multiple mouldings. The west window is a group of four lancets beneath an encircled sexfoil. The chancel and lady chapel are similarly styled, with an east window of three grouped lancets below an encircled cinquefoil.

Inside, the nave has four and a half bays, with north and south aisles. The arcades rest on circular drum iron piers faced with brick, with brick bases and capitals, and pointed moulded brick arches; the mouldings terminate in broach stops of stone. The brick walls are punctuated by horizontal stone and roughcast bands. The nave features a six-bay scissor braced crownpost roof, while the aisle roofs have queen posts with lateral braces. A baptistery is located at the west end of the north aisle, containing a stone font with a hexagonal stem and a twelve-sided bowl. A rood screen and a parclose screen, set on a stone base and dating from 1910, were designed by Gerald Cogswell. A pointed chancel arch has half arches leading to the transept and lady chapel. The east window is flanked by blind arched openings with blank Y tracery. A piscina and two sedilia, with cinquefoil heads, are also present. A mosaic marble reredos is framed by polychromatic mural decoration, beneath a four-bay cant wagon roof. A two-bay arcade separates the lady chapel to the south. The pulpit, dating from 1903, is by Whitcombe and Cogswell. The majority of the stained glass is by James Powell and Sons, London.