Church of St John the Baptist

This parish church was built between 1872 and 1910 to designs by James Brooks, with later work by JS Adkins. It stands as one of the finest examples of Brooks's mature Anglo-Catholic church architecture.

Materials and Construction

The exterior is faced in snecked Ancaster stone with Bath stone bands and dressings. The interior is built entirely of Bath stone. The nave aisles have lead roofs, while slate covers all other sections. Throughout the main body of the church, stone vaulting—an exceptional and costly feature—testifies to the wealth and devotion of the early congregation.

Plan and Setting

St John's occupies a constricted mid-terrace plot, resulting in a characteristically long and narrow cruciform plan. The true alignment runs southwest to northeast, though the description that follows uses liturgical compass points. The church is entered from the west through a narthex comprising an octagonal baptistery-cum-porch flanked by two smaller square porches. These side porches were later converted into chapels dedicated to St Saviour (south) and SS Michael and George (north), and are now used as offices.

The main body follows a distinctively Brooksian arrangement: an aisled nave of four short bays leads to a crossing with transepts projecting only slightly beyond the aisles, then continues into a two-bay chancel terminating in a deep rounded apse. South of the chancel stands an apsidal Lady chapel, balanced to the north by a chapel dedicated to SS Peter and Paul. A two-storey vestry block occupies the northeast angle of the site, with the Blessed Sacrament Chapel positioned between it and the main apse. A large modern undercroft beneath the church is not of special interest and is specifically excluded from the listing.

Exterior

The church is viewed almost exclusively from the west, where the impressive west front recalls a scaled-down French cathedral, appearing improbably amid a typical four-storey west London terrace. The style is Anglo-French Gothic of the early 13th century, employing bar tracery rather than the simpler plate tracery Brooks used in his east London churches.

The dominant feature is a large wheel window arranged in three concentric rings, the outermost formed of twelve quatrefoiled circles. Stepped arcading fills the gable above, flanked by projecting angle-buttresses that rise into cylindrical pinnacles. Below, the narthex is composed of five parts, stepping up from low twin-arched outer portals through taller gabled porch-chapels to the central baptistery. This baptistery forms an almost free-standing octagon with gabled windows, pinnacles, and a segmental main doorway topped by a canopied niche.

The side elevations, glimpsed between neighbouring houses, are much plainer, featuring tall lancets in the clerestorey and heavy flying buttresses spanning the nave aisles.

Interior: Baptistery and Western Chapels

The baptistery contains Brooks's massive square font of 1892, originally positioned in the north aisle. Carved from grey Devon marble, it displays quatrefoil relief panels depicting Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, and Holy Communion, beneath a pinnacled wooden canopy crowned by a statue of St John the Baptist. The original corner statues representing the Four Rivers of Paradise have been lost.

The main west portal—which Brooks intended to remain open to the street but which is now enclosed within Adkins' baptistery—features multiple orders of shafts with rich foliate capitals and equally rich mouldings in the arch above. Between the shafts stand stone statues of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, carved between 1909 and 1911 by JF Taylerson. The traceried wooden screen spanning the arch displays further figures by Taylerson: SS Gabriel and George, the Virgin and St Joseph, and Synagogue and Ecclesia.

The two western chapels have blocked double archways that formerly opened into the aisles. The Chapel of SS Michael and George, created as a First World War memorial, retains its furnishings including a traceried wooden screen with painted figures of the two saints and a reredos with figures copied from the main rood screen. A series of windows depicting Aspects of Christ runs across both chapels and the baptistery. St Saviour's Chapel also contains a stained-glass roundel of the Pelican in her Piety.

Nave

Brooks's design for the nave was supposedly influenced by the great Cistercian abbeys of Yorkshire, such as Rievaulx. The effect is one of austere strength articulated through vigorous linear detail. The arcades are carried on compound piers, while the springing of the vault rests on tall clustered shafts supported by tapering corbels. Prominent string-courses provide countervailing horizontal emphasis.

The clerestorey windows are single lancets set in deep splayed recesses, while those in the aisles are double lancets with detached shafts to the central mullions. The aisle and transept windows contain stained-glass figures of saints installed between 1894 and 1914, mostly by Clayton & Bell, though one south aisle window is by CE Kempe. The great west window, depicting the Virgin and Child with Patriarchs and Angels (by Percy Bacon & Bros., 1910), sits within a deep arched recess with a blind-arcaded parapet in front.

Lighting is supplied by hanging globes suspended from large polychromatic angel brackets that recall those found in the roofs of East Anglian churches. The pulpit, designed by Brooks and executed in 1902 by HH Martyn of Cheltenham, is of stone with red marble shafts and inlay, featuring figures in canopied niches representing St John the Baptist and the four Latin Doctors. A wooden tester added in 1912 to Adkins' design bears a figure of Our Lord. The pew-ends display turned decoration from the 1930s, apparently executed by members of the church's scout group. The aisles contain mosaic Stations of the Cross in aedicular surrounds, also by Adkins, dating from 1912 to 1915.

Crossing

Four massive cruciform piers with engaged shafts define the crossing. Attached to the eastern piers are twin ambones or lecterns, similar in design to the pulpit and also made by HH Martyn. These are of stone with red and green marble shafts and inlay, with book-rests in the form of an angel (south) and eagle (north). By the northern ambo stands an immense Paschal candlestick designed by Adkins in 1910, carved from golden marble with onyx banding and inlaid crosses of Egyptian porphyry, bearing figures of the Four Archangels.

Behind, almost filling the chancel arch, rises an immense triple-arched stone screen dating from 1894 to 1900. The sculpture is by Taylerson: censing angels and foliage in the tympana, a tier of niches with small statues of Christ and the Apostles, and crowning the whole a great Rood with angels and archangels bearing the Instruments of the Passion. The central arch contains elaborate wrought-iron gates and railings designed by Brooks and made in 1894 by JW Singer & Son.

Transepts and Side Chapels

The transepts are distinguished by very long single wall-shafts rising from ground level to the springing of the vault. Canopied statues of St John the Baptist (north) and Our Lady (south) are prominently displayed. Across the arches to the side-chapels are further stone screens of the same date as the chancel screen and similar in design, with wrought-iron gates and railings by Hart, Son, Peard and Co. (1903), and figures by Taylerson representing missionary saints and illustrating the spread of the Catholic Church throughout the world.

The Chapel of SS Peter and Paul on the north side has wall-panelling and an altar designed by Brooks with figures of Christ and the two saints. The altar rails from the 1920s feature small medievalising figures at the base. In a vaulted chamber above sits the organ, originally built in 1896 by August Gern and rebuilt by Henry Willis and Sons in 1928. There is no decorative organ case, only a plain pipe-rack.

The Lady Chapel displays blind wall arcading with ballflower ornament, enclosing mosaic panels and numerous memorial tablets beneath a frieze of quatrefoils and shield-bearing angels. Its apsidal sanctuary, floored in black and white marble, is filled by an elaborate gilded stone reredos of 1907 designed by Adkins. Canopied figures of the Virgin and Child with Faith, Hope, Charity, and Ecclesia (the latter holding a model of the building) alternate with reliefs of the Annunciation, Nativity, Purification, and Assumption. The altar frontal of 1905 by Gosse & Sons is a painted wooden tableau illustrating the history of the Church.

Chancel and Sanctuary

The chancel is floored with stone slabs and encaustic tiles arranged diamond-wise, and contains stalls carved by M Spencer, daughter of the second vicar, with foliage, scrolls, and shields bearing the Instruments of the Passion. In the arches to north and south are more stone screens with iron railings and gates. A frieze of shields emblazoned with various musical instruments runs above, with statues of musician angels along with saints and Old Testament figures associated with music.

Beyond the arcaded altar-rails of 1897, the sanctuary has a polychromatic marble pavement dating from 1902, with three stone steps rising to the high altar. The latter, from 1895, displays painted panels showing the Placing in the Tomb, the Resurrection, and the Harrowing of Hell. The crucifix above is of 15th-century Spanish make.

The dominant feature is the enormous arcaded stone reredos that fills most of the wall of the apse. Originally from 1892, it owes its present form to a series of enrichments and enlargements, notably in 1909 when Adkins added the lower tier of arcading with its angel spandrels and coloured marble inlays, and inserted the tall pinnacled piers that frame the projecting central section. Here the upper two tiers, along with an intervening tier of roundels, are filled with painted panels of patriarchs, prophets, saints, and angels, while the gabled central panel represents the Adoration of the Lamb. The reredos as a whole is intended to represent the Heavenly Jerusalem as described in Revelations 7:9: "a great multitude…of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb." Above, the central clerestorey window contains vividly-coloured glass by Hardman depicting Christ in Glory.

Vestry and Blessed Sacrament Chapel

The low-ceilinged vestry has a polychromatic tiled floor and built-in cabinets for vestments. Steps lead up to a tall wagon-roofed chamber above and down to a small rib-vaulted crypt below.

The small Blessed Sacrament Chapel, added in 1912 by Adkins, was used for the Reservation of the Host for the sick and dying—a favoured practice in Anglo-Catholic churches that was severely frowned upon by Low Churchmen. It has the character of a closet or hidden chamber: a narrow, confined space top-lit via a small lantern with glass representing the Four Cardinal Virtues, its walls lined with oak wainscoting decorated with coloured prints and miniature figures of the Twelve Apostles. At the far end stands a canopied reredos with painted figures of Christ and the Apostles. The Host itself was reserved in a small aumbry whose door bears a medieval relief carving of the Risen Christ.