Church Of St John The Evangelist

Church of St John the Evangelist

Anglican church built 1838-1840, designed by George Cheeseman Junior for the Reverend Henry Michell Wagner, with George Cheeseman and Son as builders. The church was altered and restored by L.A. Mackintosh in 1957 and has been used by the Carlton Hill Greek Orthodox Church since 1986. The building is constructed in stone, painted brick in Flemish bond, and stucco cement, with a gable-facing roof hipped to the north.

The plan is oriented on a west-east axis with a square nave, contrary to what the facade suggests. A shallow rectangular chancel recess projects to the east, with a vestry at the south-east corner. A U-shaped gallery to the nave is accessed through square vestibules containing stairs.

The church is designed in the Greek Revival style. The western facade is divided into three bays by four giant Tuscan pilasters supporting a massive entablature with triglyph and metope frieze. The central bay is wider than the end bays and recessed, with flat-arched entrances on its returns and a plain pediment above topped with a gable coping. A metal cross sits at the peak of the pediment, with a bell cote behind. To either side of the central recess is a flat-arched entrance set into an aedicule of paired fluted Tuscan pilasters, entablature, and pediment with raking cornice, all in stucco cement. Above each aedicule is a roundel: the left bears the monogram of architect L.A. Mackintosh topped by a crown; the right displays the eagle symbol of St John the Evangelist. Both roundels are white on a blue field. The side and rear walls are built in purplish-brown brick laid in English bond, with tall camber-arched windows with gauged brick lintels lighting the nave and gallery. A single-storey vestry on the right return is articulated by Tuscan pilastrade. A stone at the foot of the right return records: "This Corner Stone placed on October 15th, 1838. [obscured] M. Wagner. Architect [obscured]".

The interior contains a flat-arched entrance to the chancel through antae supporting an entablature, now partly obscured by a Greek iconostasis. A timber reredos built as a memorial to the 1914-1918 war features panels with Composite order pilasters and a segmental pediment over the centre. The gallery runs around three sides on ten cast-iron Doric columns with responds to the east wall; gallery fronts are treated as plain entablature with parapet. The broadly splayed windows are bisected by the galleries and filled with opaque glass. Plain walls terminate in an entablature with broad soffit. The flat ceiling is divided into nine panels by broad, shallow beams, with the centre panel being the largest and ornamented with an octagonal pattern; the remaining panels are subdivided into geometric figures. The nave benches, dating from the mid to late 19th century, are arranged to form a centre and side aisles. At the north-east corner of the nave stands a mid-19th-century timber pulpit. Opposite the chancel under the gallery is an eight-sided stone baptismal font with timber cover and wrought-iron rail, both latter features in the Gothic Revival style. The organ is located in the centre of the west gallery, with the Royal Arms fixed to a railing in front of it. Notable memorial plaques include those to Sophia Jackson (died 1845) and Caroline Drummond (died 1868) on the west wall, and to Laetitia Tilbury Tarner on the north wall; Tarner lived in nearby Tilbury Place.