Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

An Anglican church designed in 1902 by John Samuel Alder, with the foundation stone laid on 16 July 1904 and the nave consecrated in 1905. The eastern bay of the nave was completed posthumously in 1925, while the chancel and chapel were completed in 1938 to revised designs by Martin Travers. The building is constructed of stone with roofs of green slate laid in diminishing courses.

The church adopts a Decorated style for the nave, with the chancel featuring Perpendicular style tracery. The plan comprises a nave with aisles and vestigial transepts, a chancel, a chapel, and a linked vestry.

The square chancel occupies one bay and contains a five-light Perpendicular east window and a three-light south window in stripped style. It is covered by a segmental barrel-vaulted wood roof painted light blue and cream with touches of gold. The chancel roof is lower than that of the nave, with the gap filled by a painting depicting Christ flanked by the Virgin Mary and the dedicating saint. The north chapel extends across three bays, including the easternmost bay of the north aisle, and features single lancets and a three-light east window in Travers's deliberately stripped design—in stark contrast to the rich decorated tracery used by Alder elsewhere. The chapel has wood roofs to the centre and sanctuary, with the latter painted in colours identical to the chancel.

The nave comprises six bays, with the easternmost demarcated by a low parapet wall to form a choir area featuring carved benches arranged in collegiate fashion. The westernmost bay is half the width of the remainder and has two-light windows instead of the four-light windows found elsewhere, a device common in Alder's work. Two-light clerestory windows light each bay. The nave roof is a pointed barrel vault in wood with arched ribs defining the bays and intermediate divisions. The north and south nave aisles have lean-to roofs with arched principles reflecting the nave arcade. The easternmost aisle bays are set off from the rest by transverse pointed arches in stone, with the easternmost bay of the north aisle featuring a roof on a transverse axis forming a vestigial transept. An organ chamber occupies the easternmost bay of the south aisle.

The entrance arrangements include a north-west porch with a single entrance to the west end and a shallow porch entrance to the north transept.

Furnishings include a carved wood pulpit positioned to the ritual north-east of the nave with a stair and tester, and a small stone font at the east end of the north aisle. The altar is raised on three steps to form a sanctuary enclosed by a wooden rail. An elegant First World War memorial is formed from part of the north wall of the chapel. Wood-block paving in herringbone pattern is laid throughout. The windows contain fragments of old glass to the head of the east window, with good twentieth-century glass elsewhere, although most windows are largely filled with opaque and tinted leaded lights. All door furniture and most rainwater goods are of original design. An external carved relief inscribed 'ECCE AGNUS DEI' appears on the east nave wall.

A projecting single-storey vestry of stone and green slate in the Decorated style stands to the ritual south-east, with lancets joined in twos and threes under heavy hood moulds. It is firmly linked to the main structure by a stout passageway.