Church of St John the Baptist (St John's Wood Chapel) is a Grade II* listed building in the Westminster local planning authority area, England. A Early 19th century Church. 3 related planning applications.
Church of St John the Baptist (St John's Wood Chapel)
- WRENN ID
- calm-span-grain
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Westminster
- Constituency
- Cities of London and Westminster MP: Rachel Blake (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of St John the Baptist (St John's Wood Chapel), St John's Wood Road Nw8, City of Westminster, NW8 7NE
- OS grid reference
- TQ 271 828
- Coordinates
- 51.53058, -0.16843
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
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.
Local climate
Church of St John the Baptist (St John's Wood Chapel) sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 93% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 94% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 51% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 3 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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