Church of St John, Belmont

The Church of St John, Belmont, was designed in 1913 by the architectural firm of Greenaway and Newberry in a 14th-century Gothic style "treated in a modern manner" and constructed in 1914–15. Most of the furnishings were installed by 1924 to the original designs. The western bay of the nave was built in 1967, keeping to the original design.

Materials and Construction

The exterior walls are built of Bargate stone laid in irregular courses, with Ketton stone dressings and tracery, and a tiled roof. Inside, the walls are brick except in the Lady Chapel, which has ashlar walls, and the chancel, which is ashlar below and plastered above. The dressings are Bath stone and the roofs are Oregon pine. The windows in the aisles, transepts and elsewhere retain their original rolled glass and leading designed by the architects, some with simple leaf or flame patterns. Many of the fittings are oak.

Plan

The building comprises a three-bay nave with north and south aisles and transepts, a three-bay chancel, a three-bay Lady Chapel to the south-east, north-east vestries, and a passage aisle and organ loft north of the chancel, partly in the base of the uncompleted tower. At the west end of the nave is a 1987 gallery between two inner entrance lobbies, with rooms above.

Exterior

The main tiled roof has a single ridge running from end to end and sweeps down over the nave and aisles.

The west end has end buttresses and a large Decorated Gothic-style traceried window of 1888, installed in 1967 but originally from the Church of St Paul, St Leonards-on-Sea, now demolished.

The north and south aisles have arched entrances with double plank doors at the west end, gabled dormers above, and a triple and a double pointed arched window. The gabled transepts have large pointed arched traceried windows. At the north-east end is the unfinished tower of two stages with square buttresses, small round-headed upper windows and a four-light mullion and transom window under a relieving arch on the north side. At its east side is a gabled single-storey vestry with a canted bay window and a segmental-headed entrance with a half-glazed door with ornamental hinges.

The side walls of the chancel have three paired arched windows. The chancel east end has a gable with a cross-shaped saddlestone. Immediately below is a skeleton iron dial clock commemorating Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, by the long-established clock manufacturers Gillett and Johnston of Croydon. Below the east window is the foundation stone laid by the wife of the local lord of the manor, with the inscription: "THIS STONE WAS LAID BY FLORENCE E NORTHEY AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM JULY XVIII AD MCMXIV HUBERT LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK ALFRED E TONKIN CURATE IN CHARGE".

The south-east Lady Chapel has a gabled east end and three small double-arched windows.

Interior

The lower part of the walls is purple-brown Crowborough brick and the upper parts are yellow-cream stocks, with some banding to make the transition. The exceptions are the Lady Chapel, with ashlar walls, and the chancel, which is ashlar below and smooth-plastered above. The pillars, arches, window surrounds and other dressings are Bath stone, and the bold and solid pitched roofs are Oregon pine. The nave has three-bay arcades separating it from the aisles and transepts, the arch mouldings dying smoothly into the octagonal pillars, and the stone dressings are flush with the adjoining brickwork.

The chancel has original chequerboard stone paving. The sedilia each have their own moulded pointed arch. The roof is ribbed and panelled. The arcade separating the chancel and Lady Chapel is of richer design than other parts of the church, with clustered columns, capitals and ball-flower ornament in the arch mouldings.

The Lady Chapel has ashlar walls, chequerboard paving and a panelled roof, painted and picked out in colours and gilding in 1978, the part over the altar with blank tracery ornament.

Fittings and Furnishings

Nearly all the fittings and furnishings for the church were provided for the 1915 opening or within the next ten years, and almost all were designed by the church's architects and remain in position today.

The font is the oldest item in the church, early 18th century, possibly 1706. It is a handsome alabaster bowl on a stem made for the Church of All Saints in the High Street in Oxford, moved to another Oxford church in 1896, and then given to St John's in 1915. It was moved to its present position in the south transept in 1967.

There is a complete set of oak fittings. The nave pews are oak of open-bench type, of 1915, by Greenaway and Newberry, of simple Arts and Crafts design and proportion. The pulpit is oak by Greenaway and Newberry, in Arts and Crafts Gothic, with a splayed profile and fine elaborate carving which includes a grape and vine leaf frieze, linenfold patterning, openwork tracery and more. Carved around it are the words "This pulpit was given by the congregation as a thank offering for victory vouchsafed in the Great War AD MCMXIV MCMXVIII". The lectern is oak, probably in place in 1915 and possibly by Greenaway and Newberry. An inscription records that it commemorates the Reverend H E M Siddall, a man active in promoting the development of the church who had died prematurely in 1907. The altar is oak by Greenaway and Newberry and, like the pulpit, has rich carving, Gothic in inspiration, and similar friezes and panels. The construction is traditional, with massive uprights and pegged joints. A later central panel, inserted in 1934, is carved with a design of the Lamb of God. The choir stalls are oak by Greenaway and Newberry, the design less based on historic precedent but in the Arts and Crafts tradition of good and honest workmanship, the bench ends carved with attractive small roundels, each one different. The organ loft is also in matching style. The vestries retain built-in wooden cupboards. The electric light fittings are Arts and Crafts-style metal wall and pillar brackets of elegant branching designs, which appear to be the original ones from 1915, but with later glass shades.

A war memorial in the north transept consists of a bronze tablet of 1920 listing 42 Belmont men who died in the First World War. Families and friends proposed it and paid the cost of £160. It was made by the Birmingham Guild, and was described at the time as "an excellent example of the high-class work produced by this firm. The modelling of the wreath, in particular, is very fine". A metal plate added below it in 1967 commemorates all the Belmont men and women who died during the Second World War.

Stained Glass

The east window is of 1971 by Lawrence Lee (1909–2011), the major 20th-century stained glass designer responsible for the nave windows of Coventry Cathedral, whose studio had been based locally in the 1950s. It has rich colouring, the subject being the baptism of Christ, with three main figures—Christ, St Mary and St John the Baptist—movingly drawn and painted, and contrasting with the complexity and mystery of all around them. Lawrence Lee drew inspiration from the Book of Revelation, incorporating its images of "the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal", the city of the New Jerusalem, the trees of life, their leaves serving "for the healing of nations", together with symbols of the Holy Spirit: tongues of fire, lightning, doves and the mighty rushing wind. Lee wrote that there is "a water and earth and air theme in the texture of the window—a sparkle of sunlight on water if you like and a feeling of growth and life. My hope is that the window will speak for itself and that people will find things old and new in it as they live with it".

The west window is of 1888 by the firm of Lavers, Barraud and Westlake, designed by one of the partners, Nathaniel Westlake (1833–1921), and it was installed at St John's in 1967 from the demolished Church of St Paul's, St Leonards-on-Sea. The subject is the Communion of Saints and the design skilfully marshals 60 or so individual figures. Across the foot of the seven main lights runs a frieze of saints, above is a row of kings and princes, and above that are archangels. Above all these are three large roundels or rose windows, one with the group of followers watching at the Crucifixion, another with four saints, and in the top central roundel, the climax to the design, is Christ in Majesty, surrounded by angels with censers and the symbols of the four gospel writers.