Church Of St John The Baptist (St John'S Wood Chapel)

The Church of St John the Baptist, also known as St John's Wood Chapel, is a Grade II* listed church built between 1813 and 1814 by Thomas Hardwick. It was constructed as a chapel of ease for the developing Portman and Eyre Estates in the area. The church features a Portland stone front and stone-dressed stock brick sides, topped with a leaded roof. It has a simple rectangular shape with a narrower, lower, shallow chancel.

The design is a chaste neo-classical style, highlighted by a tetrastyle portico and a columned cupola-bellcote. The building has two storeys to accommodate galleries and a five-bay south front, which is the ritual west front. The central doorway is corniced and flanked by niches, while the outer bays contain plain square-headed doorways leading to the gallery stairs and semicircular arches. The first-floor windows are recessed for one order, and the structure features plinths, a sill band, a crowning cornice, and a parapet.

The centre is accentuated by an Ionic giant portico with an entablature and a pediment that contains a clock face. A small stone domed cupola rises from an octagonal base, supported by detached pairs of Doric columns that create breaks in the entablature on the diagonals. Inside, the church boasts an elegant original interior with Tuscan columns supporting the gallery above, and "Tower of the Winds" columns that rise to a slightly curved ceiling. The church also features white painted box pews and a notable collection of early 19th-century Grecian wall monuments. St John's was designed concurrently with Hardwick's initial chapel of ease scheme at St Mary's, Marylebone Road, which it closely resembles before the latter's final elaboration.