Church Of St John

The Church of St John is a former parish church, now a roofless shell, dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. It comprises a nave, chancel, south porch, and west tower. The structure is primarily flint rubble with remnants of old render, incorporating stone and red brick in the south nave wall, freestone dressings, and a moulded stone string course below the nave windows and along the chancel walls.

The three-bay nave has south buttresses featuring panels of black knapped flint, with wide and diagonal buttresses at the south-east and north-east corners respectively. The south side has two 3-light windows with intersecting tracery, and one Y-window. The north side has three 2-light windows, two with curvilinear tracery and one with no tracery remaining. 13th-century north and south doorways have continuous hollow chamfer mouldings. The 14th-century porch, formerly gabled, has diagonal buttresses with chequerwork bases in stone and black knapped flint, along with a blocked niche above the doorway.

The chancel features single 2-light windows with decorated tracery in the north and south walls, and a similar 2-light east window. An external panel on the east gable displays the dates 1616 and 1858, along with the initials GB for George Bidwell, Rector from 1811 to 1865. The east wall is rendered, with crow-stepped red brick finishing the gable slope, part of the 1616 restoration work.

The west wall of the tower abuts the churchyard boundary, with the lowest stage open to create a processional way. The tower has four stages, featuring a base of moulded stone blocks, a repaired embattled parapet with chequerwork patterns of black knapped flint and red and white brick, and diagonal buttresses to the west. A stair turret is set externally into the south-east angle, rising to the top of the second stage and accessed by a doorway in the west wall of the nave. A small square window is located high in the west gable.