Church Of St John The Baptist With Churchyard Cross And Lych Gate

Church of St John the Baptist with Churchyard Cross and Lych Gate

A parish church built between 1873 and 1890, designed by the architect A W Blomfield. It stands on Waterloo Road in Crowthorne and has later extensions, including a hall and meeting rooms added to the west end in 1968.

The church is constructed of local red brick with bands of black brick and Bath stone dressings, with a tiled roof. It displays High Victorian Decorated Gothic style with steep gabled roofs, buttressed walls, and windows featuring bar tracery. The large and elaborate east and west windows contrast with smaller, simpler openings in the aisles, chapel and vestry. The nave roof continues over the aisles in a catslide, interrupted by two transverse gables with Y-tracery windows on each side. The chancel, lady chapel and choir vestry each have pitched roofs creating a trio of gables at the east end. Both the east and west gables carry cross finials. Between the nave and chancel, the roof ridge supports a tall steep-gabled bellcote. A stone consecration cross is set into the wall beneath the east window.

The aisled nave has cylindrical stone piers supporting a four-bay unmoulded arcade of striped brickwork. An open arch-braced roof on stone corbels spans the interior. The aisles feature a complex roof-structure with paired collared rafters in the gable bays, resting on transverse beams with arched braces. A wide rectangular opening beneath the west window provides access to the 1968 extension. The broad chancel arch springs from corbels in the form of flat pilasters with foliate capitals. The chancel beyond has a boarded wagon roof and is flanked by two-bay arcades with foliate capitals. Its east wall is whitewashed, and the east window recess has a hood-mould framed by ringed granite shafts. The lady chapel to the south contains a wagon roof and lancet east window. To the north of the chancel lie the organ chamber, a small clergy vestry and a larger choir vestry with traceried windows and wagon roof.

An almost complete set of original furnishings survives, though much rearranged. These include open-backed pews, carved oak choir stalls with poppy-heads (now in the sanctuary), oak screens to the lady chapel and organ chamber, an oak reredos (moved to the Lady Chapel in 1958 with figures added by Colin Shewing), an oak pulpit on a stone base, and a stone font (now in the south aisle). The aisles and chancel are floored in red and black quarry tiles. Memorial tablets, mostly to former vicars, are displayed in the chancel, which also contains a modern forward altar on a platform surrounded by simple oak rails.

The great east window is by Charles Eamer Kempe and depicts the Crucifixion flanked by saints and prophets with Biblical scenes below. The Lady Chapel's late 19th-century east window shows the Madonna and Child. Three lancet-shaped stained glass panels appear in the westernmost south aisle window; other windows contain plain leaded glass.

In the churchyard stand a stone cross and a lych gate, both erected in 1913 by anonymous parishioners. The cross, located immediately west of the church, has a tall shaft with a cusped head and bud-like mouldings to its base, set on a square stepped plinth. The plinth's upper stage bears text in free Arts and Crafts-style lettering reading: 'To the Glory of God and in remembrance of many who without memorial rest in his most loving keeping this Cross is dedicated AD 1913'. At the south-east corner of the churchyard stands the lych gate, an open oak-framed canopy with a tiled roof resting upon low stone-coped brick walls. A Gothic text on the lintel describes it as 'A-Thankoffering'. The structure has been adapted to serve as a war memorial, with plaster tablets bearing the names of the Fallen inserted into four of the eight arched side panels. The gate was altered in 1921.

The church originated from a temporary wooden chapel established at Crowthorne in the 1860s to serve the expanding modern village. Wellington College nearby was a principal patron, and funds were raised for a permanent structure. The architect A W Blomfield obtained the designs, and the nave and aisles were completed and consecrated in 1873. The chancel and its furnishings were added in 1889–90, yielding a complete church seating 300 worshippers. The great east window was installed in 1894, designed 10 years previously by the studio of Charles Eamer Kempe. The choir vestry was extended in 1909, and the churchyard cross and lych gate followed in 1913. Memorial tablets commemorating the dead of the Great War were added to the lych gate in 1921. A large extension incorporating a hall, toilets and meeting rooms was added to the west end in 1968 by the architect David Evelyn Nye, requiring the demolition of Blomfield's apsidal western baptistery. Various internal reorderings occurred during the later 20th century, notably the creation of the present forward altar platform in 1980.

Arthur William Blomfield (1829–1899) was one of the most prolific and successful Gothic Revival architects of the 19th century. Son of Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London from 1828 to 1856, he was educated at Rugby and Cambridge before being articled to Philip Charles Hardwick in 1852. He was a leading exponent of High Victorian style, combining English Gothic models advocated by Pugin with elements from Italian, French and German medieval traditions. His best-known buildings include the Royal College of Music in South Kensington (1889–94) and the nave of Southwark Cathedral, London (1890–97). He also designed the chancel at Wellington College Chapel (1886–9).