Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is a large parish church on the north side of Eltham High Street, designed by Arthur W Blomfield and built between 1873 and 1875, with the tower and spire completed in 1879. The building is constructed of uncoursed semi-dressed ragstone with Bath stone dressings and red clay tile roofs.

The church is designed in the Early English style and occupies a prominent position at a major road crossing in central Eltham. Its most striking feature is the southwest steeple, which serves as a porch entrance. This three-stage tower has large angle buttresses; the two lower stages are plain, while the upper stage contains pairs of large lancet belfry windows with a slender shaft bearing shaft rings between them. The tower supports a broach spire with tall broaches and low-set, elongated lucarnes on the cardinal faces, with a smaller set of lucarnes on the intermediate faces. The five-bay nave has a large clerestory; the westerly windows comprise four lancets under a superordinate arch, with the middle two lancets of equal height flanked by lower ones, while the east bay has a single light. The aisles have lean-to roofs with bays demarcated by offset buttresses, each bay containing a pair of lancets. A large south transeptal chapel extends from the southwest part of the chancel, with a south window of three graded lancets under a superordinate arch. The chancel's east end has a similar arrangement with five lancets. At the west end is a lean-to narthex-porch, now the church office, with north and south entrances and lancets alternating with blind arches in the west wall; above is a row of equal-height lancets and a sexfoil circular window. A plain parish room of approximately 1980 has been added north of the Victorian vestry and is faced with artificial stone.

The interior is tall and spacious, painted predominantly white throughout. The nave and aisles are separated by five-bay arcades with double-chamfered arches carried on circular piers with moulded capitals and bases. The chancel, of the same width as the nave, is demarcated by an arch with double chamfering springing from tapering corbels and short semi-circular shafts. Similar arches connect the chancel to the organ chamber to the north and the chapel to the south. The five-sided nave roof features tie-beams and crown-posts, while the chancel roof is keel-shaped.

The aisle walls contain numerous wall monuments from the previous church, adding substantially to the building's character. The oldest dates to the late 17th century and is located at the east end of the north wall of the north aisle. An 18th-century tablet to J. Bott, designed by J. Bacon and made by S. Manning, depicts a weeping woman by a sarcophagus and is adjacent on the east wall. Several fixtures remain from the 1870s rebuilding. The font, originally at the west end of the north aisle and now positioned at the west end of the nave, is a robust mid-Victorian piece with a bowl of gently rounded lobes carried on a shafted polychromatic base. The east end of the church has a plain wall, though tiling is said to exist beneath the white paint. The wooden pulpit features open tracery-work. The pews are not original to St John's but were transferred from St Mary, Lambeth after that church was converted into the Museum of Garden History and have shaped ends. The east and west windows contain glass from the 1950s by B. E. E Barber and B. Thurston. Victorian stained glass survives in several side windows.

South of the south transept stands a grey granite cross on steps, a memorial to Richard Mills dated 1901. At the southeast corner of the churchyard is an attractive timber and tiled lych-gate on a stone plinth. The churchyard wall to the south and east is separately listed at Grade II and dates from the 16th and 17th centuries.

The old parish church of Eltham was considered inadequate by the 1870s. The application for funds to the Incorporated Church Building Society described the existing building as wretched, constructed of thin stock brick with poor windows, and the north aisle, added in 1670, was noted as being in very bad style with a nave in a decayed state. By that time Eltham had acquired the new church of Holy Trinity and new National Schools. The new church was consecrated on 3 August 1875 and included 716 seats, 120 of them for children. Arthur W Blomfield (1829-99) was one of the busiest Victorian church-builders, beginning practice in 1856 with a career spanning nearly half a century. He was knighted in 1889 and awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1891.

A major transformation of the interior was undertaken in 1973-74 under Thomas Ford. This work involved stripping out the Victorian reredos, chancel screen (part of which was resited in the northwest nave arcade arch), and subsidiary screens, painting all surfaces white, and carpeting the entire floor. The interior is now a hybrid of late 19th-century and late 20th-century character.