Church Of St John Of Jerusalem

The Church of St John of Jerusalem is a large and commanding church built between 1845 and 1848 by E. C. Hakewill in the Early English Gothic Revival style. It replaced an earlier chapel of ease in Well Street dating from 1806-10, and was constructed to serve the rapidly growing population of South Hackney as the fields between Well Street, Mare Street and Lauriston Road were developed with housing in the first half of the 19th century.

Materials and Structure

The church is built of Kentish ragstone with limestone dressings and has slate roofs. It follows a cruciform plan with a west tower, three-sided apse, and a small vestry to the north-east.

The Tower

The west tower rises in four stages. The ground floor features a large west portal, restored around 2000, with multiple mouldings and shafts with foliage capitals. The tympanum contains a carving of Christ Walking on the Waters. The second stage displays seven-bay cusped arcading on the west and south facades, resembling medieval work at St Mary, Stamford, although the shafts on the south facade are lost. The third stage has three-bay trefoiled arcading on the west, north and south facades. The bell stage at the top has three lancet openings on each face. The original stone steeple was removed in 1954 following war damage and replaced with a slender copper spire by N. F. Cachemaille-Day, who served as architect to the Diocese of London in the post-war period.

External Features

The nave extends for six bays with flanking aisles under lean-to roofs. Flying buttresses connect the aisle side walls to the clerestory. There are no porches, only narrow doorways on both the north and south sides with mouldings, engaged shafts and foliage capitals. The two-light clerestory windows display late 13th-century style tracery, with lancets in the western bays. The tall transepts rise to the height of the nave roof and feature four-light Geometrical windows set high up. The east end forms a three-sided apse with a single lancet per bay.

Interior Architecture

The church is entered through three doorways in a stone screen at the base of the tower. The interior is remarkable for its large scale and height—the apex of the nave roof reaches nearly 20 metres from the ground—and the consistent detail throughout creates an arresting space with an uninterrupted vista to the east end. The walls are plastered and painted light cream.

The arcades are of particular special interest in that they deliberately mix octagonal and round piers. On the north side all piers are octagonal except for the west pier; on the south side all are circular apart from the two eastern ones. The capitals also receive differing treatment: varied foliage for the octagonal ones, moulded for the circular piers, except for one on the south which has foliage. There is foliate detail in the outer chamfering of the arches which changes from bay to bay. The clerestory treatment also varies, with lancets in the two south-west bays and one in the north-west bay. This represents an early and important example of an architect seeking to replicate the organic appearance of a medieval church, where features evolved over time. The external tracery of the two-light clerestory windows is repeated in detached form inside, modelled on the church at Stone in Kent. The trefoiled arcading around the chancel with detached shafts is likewise modelled on Stone, Kent.

The tall chancel arch has clustered shafts and Early English foliate capitals. There are utilitarian late 20th-century partitions in the ends of the transepts.

Roofs and Flooring

The nave has an arch-braced roof with broad cusping on the arches. The roof over the crossing is boarded with thin, cusped crossing members. The south transept roof resembles that in the nave, while the north transept roof has simpler detail, for example lacking cusping. The chancel roof is stone-vaulted with ribs; there is one narrow quadripartite bay before the apse.

The flooring in the nave was replaced in 1893 and consists of black and white terrazzo forming polygonal patterns with lozenge borders. Ornate cast-iron grilles over the heating pipes run either side of the central east-west alley. Minton tiling appears in the chancel, with four-tile quatrefoil patterns in the choir area and further four-tile designs in the sanctuary.

Furnishings and Fittings

Crisply-executed poppy head bench ends with varying designs survive from the original scheme, though their doors have been removed. The benches at the rear have ornate Geometrical-tracery backs and their ends feature an additional buttress-like feature supporting various creatures. A similar device but with musical angels and griffons appears in the stalls, which were moved from the chancel to the east end of the nave in the 1960s; only those on the south side survive.

Among the monuments of note is a brass tablet in a grey limestone surround to H. H. Norris, the first rector, located in the north transept. A portrait of Norris hangs in the south transept. The hanging rood in the chancel arch is late 20th century.

Stained Glass

The glass is post-war, replacing windows lost during the Second World War. The chancel and transept windows are by Arthur Erridge, dating from around 1950. Those in the chancel have healing as a theme.

Historical Context

The church originally provided 1,509 seats comprising 572 pews and 935 free seats, and is said to be the third largest parish church in London. It was funded by public subscription, with £1,000 granted by the Church Commissioners, a government board established in 1818 to build new churches. The area suffered bombing in the Second World War, during which the church lost its stone steeple.

The first rector, the Reverend Henry Handley Norris, was instrumental in raising funds and commissioning the design of the new church. Norris was a leading member of the Hackney Phalanx, a group that campaigned for more churches and church schools to be built in populous areas. He enjoyed a brief period of national prominence between 1812 and 1827 as an advisor to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, on religious affairs and the appointment of bishops.

The appearance and lavishness of the church is in part Norris's creation. When Hakewill's cost estimates proved inaccurate, Norris renewed his fundraising efforts to ensure that no compromises were made in the architecture. Norris was also determined that St John should have the fittings he considered appropriate in English churches, "distinguishing them alike from the grotesque and unseemly style of furniture which often obscures the building and distracts the attention of the worshipper in Roman Catholic churches, and from the poverty and meanness of the bare walls, in those countries where the Reformation kept no such happy mean as in our own".

The church was widely praised at the time of its consecration and was analysed by The Builder and the influential Ecclesiologist publication. The latter described it as "a striking monument ... of how soon and to what extent the Church of England has already begun in her religious structures to assert her unity with the Catholic church of ancient times".

E. C. Hakewill came from a family of architects, studied at the Royal Academy and was a pupil of Philip Hardwick. He has several listed buildings to his name, including ten medieval churches restored by him and three 19th-century buildings: two churches in Clapton, not far from St John of Jerusalem, and one at Calverton near Milton Keynes, as well as a house for himself in Playford in Suffolk.

The dedication of the church is taken from a local connection with the Order of St John, the Knights Templar, who received rents on a manor nearby which was demolished in the early 19th century.

Significance

The Church of St John of Jerusalem is of more than special architectural interest as a fully-fledged Gothic Revival church in the Early English style with features that can be traced to the architecture of specific medieval churches. The nave arcade and tower are particularly notable in this regard. As the Ecclesiologist publication eloquently surmised at the time, the building is an exemplar of the medievalising tendencies of the 19th-century revival of the Church of England. The building of the church was directed by its first Rector, the Reverend H. N. Norris, a man of strident views on the appearance of church buildings who, through the Hackney Phalanx, was influential in the 19th-century campaign for church building. This connection, remembered in the brass plaque in the north transept, adds to the special historic interest of the church.