Church of St John the Evangelist, with associated walls, railings and gateways

Church of St John the Evangelist is an Anglican church in Gothic Revival style, built in 1859-1860 to designs by Henry Jarvis. A vestry was added in 1912 by Greenaway and Newberry. The church is constructed of ragstone facing with Bath stone dressings and slate roofs.

The church is oriented west to east with the chancel to the east. The nave consists of five bays with aisles, while the square-ended chancel has three bays. A tower stands at the south-west, and there are entrance porches to the north (accessed from Larcom Street) and at the west end, plus an entrance at the foot of the tower. The original vestry occupies the southern angle between nave and chancel; the 1912 vestry in the northern angle replaced the original organ chamber.

On the north elevation facing the street, offset buttresses separate the aisle bays. Windows are single narrow lancets protected by hoodmoulds with foliate stops. The porch, located in the second bay from the west, has a gabled roof with a stone cross finial at the apex. Its pointed-arched opening is of two orders with colonnettes and contains double boarded doors with elaborate wrought-iron strap hinges. Internally the porch is panelled, with later glazed inner doors. Six steeply-pitched gabled dormers break the nave roof to the north, each containing a cinquefoil light and topped with an iron cross finial.

On the south side, the aisle has only four bays, the westernmost being occupied by the tower. A small porch at the east end of the south aisle, giving access to the church, does not appear on Jarvis's original plan. The incomplete tower is topped by wide corner crenellations, apparently a later extension of the capped corners originally designed to support a belfry. The tower has a doorway to the west and paired narrow trefoil-headed windows to west and south in the second stage; angle buttresses rise into the second stage.

At the west end, the church is entered at the centre of the nave through a doorway similar to that in the north porch. Above is a Decorated four-light window of bar tracery, and above that a roundel with cusped tracery of unusual design. The east end features a composition of five lancets ascending in height towards the centre, each framed by delicate colonnettes and linked by hood moulds.

The original vestry, set back to the south, is a small unadorned structure with a pitched roof, blind to the east and with a small window to the south. The 1912 vestry to the north consists of two ranges set at right angles. The vestry is entered through a segmental-arched door in the smaller eastern range, which has a canted bay to the east lit by a band of short mullioned windows with casement frames. The gable end to the north elevation is lit by a horizontal mullioned and transomed window, with the date 'MCMXII' above. The design of the church recalls the earlier works of the architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) and of his one-time pupil Henry Woodyer (1816-1896).

The church has open timber roofs to the nave aisles and chancel, with a wagon roof to the nave. The dormer windows to the north form a shallow clerestory. The pointed arcades are carried on paired cast-iron columns with splayed capitals enriched with ivy decoration, a very unusual feature in a 'High' Anglican church of this date. Within the chancel, the roof has pointed trusses supported on moulded corbels. The pointed chancel arch is supported on clustered engaged columns, the truncated central column supported on a foliate corbel.

Spanning the chancel arch is a brass rood beam with coloured decoration of circa 1936 by Ninian Comper. The internal framing of the east window matches that seen outside; the glass dates from 1892 and commemorates George Toulson Cotham, founder and first vicar of the church. Other glass within the church includes some figurative windows in the aisles, understood to have been supplied by a manufacturer in Silvertown, known for producing cheap stained glass frequently used in mission churches.

The construction of the new vestry in 1912, replacing the original organ chamber, freed the original vestry to the south of the chancel, which in 1922 was dedicated as a memorial chapel to the men of the parish who fell in the First World War. A statue of Joan of Arc has been placed in the chapel, and a statue of St George by Comper stands outside. The chapel was later named the Walsingham Chapel, with a model of Our Lady of Walsingham hung within the reredos. The former doorway to the organ chamber, at the east end of the north aisle, is now blocked; this position is now occupied by a Sacred Heart statue under a baldachino by Comper. The organ is now at the west end of the north aisle in a panelled enclosure dating from 2001.

Original fittings within the church include the enclosed panelled pews situated in the main body of the nave; those in the baptistry at the west end have been brought from elsewhere. The font is original to the church, though it has been moved to the centre of the baptistry. It is of medieval form, on columns, with crocketed corners and a gadrooned top. The pulpit, panelled and arcaded, dates from 1912 and commemorates the work of the Reverend Canon Jephson and Mrs Jephson.

Other furnishings include the timber rails protecting the high altar, of splat baluster form with gilding, by Comper and thought to date from about 1928. The rails enclosing the nave altar, which was introduced in the 1970s, follow the design of Comper's rails and were made in about 2000. This area has been raised, and new floor tiles placed here and in the chancel.

The pleated embroidered reredos is the work of Martin Travers, at one time an assistant to Comper, and is thought to date from about 1931; this has been bought from the Church of the Good Shepherd, Borough Green, Kent. The three medieval-style sanctuary lamps form a memorial to the eight scouts of the 2nd Walworth scout troop, based at St John's, who were drowned at Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey in 1912.

The church contains a number of statues of saints, in addition to those mentioned above, installed at various dates and reflecting the development of the church and its community. These include Comper's statue of St John the Evangelist positioned in the south aisle, and a statue of St Martin de Porres, considered to be the patron saint of those working for racial justice and harmony, placed in the north aisle in the late 1990s, as well as one of the Virgin Mary, brought from the demolished St Mark's, East Street, now in the porch. The late-19th century Stations of the Cross, by Edouard Cabane, come from the same church. The reredoses of the Lady Chapel and the All Souls' Chapel are by Laurence King.

The new vestry consists of two rooms with lobbies. The principal room has a cast-iron chimneypiece in Arts and Crafts style with a relief panel of the Adoration of the Magi; the inner room is fitted with storage chests and cupboards for vestments, and a simpler fireplace set in a panelled surround.

The churchyard is partially surrounded by original wrought-iron railings with slender pointed finials. To Larcom Street, the railings are shorter, being set on a red-brick wall with stone capping. At each end of this wall is a gateway marked by sturdy brick piers with stone bases and trefoil-moulded stone caps. There are three piers to the western gateway, providing adjacent entrances to the church to the east and the school to the west. The gateways hold wrought-iron gates in the same style as the railings. The railings also form the northern part of the pathway leading to Charlestown Street, the original railings extending to the north-east corner of the vestry. The pathway continues southwards to Walcorde Avenue with replacement railings.