Church Of St John The Divine

CHATHAM

TQ7567NE RAILWAY STREET 762-1/4/29 (North West side) 29/10/52 Church of St John the Divine

II*

Church. 1820-21 by Sir Robert Smirke, 1863 apse by GM Hills. Rock-faced limestone ashlar and dressings and a hipped slate roof. STYLE: Italianate. PLAN: rectangular with recessed corners and a W tower. EXTERIOR: projecting square apse has clasping paired pilasters, entablature and pediment, with a moulded round-arched window containing a Venetian window with 5 oculi following the arch. Plain plinth, plat band, first-floor sill and impost bands carried over the windows, cornice and parapet; cambered heads to ground floor and round-arched heads to first-floor windows, blind windows each side of the apse. 8-bay N side, the W bay set back. 3-bay W end with the middle set forward with a doorway with plain architrave and cornice to a 2-leaf 6-panel door with flush panels; plain doorways to outer bays, and round-arched upper windows, with a plain square 2-stage tower with a clock to the lower one, and round-arched louvred windows to the ashlar upper stage, with a blocking course. 8-bay N side has a central porch with pilasters to an entablature, and double panelled doors. INTERIOR: not inspected but noted as having galleried sides and end on fluted Doric columns and a moulded front, 2-centre chancel arch on corbels, flanked by painted flat buttresses, and a panelled ceiling. E window 1868 by Alexander Gibbs. HISTORY: built as a Commissioners church. (The Buildings of England: Newman J: West Kent and the Weald: London: 1976-: 201; NMR: photograph: London).

Listing NGR: TQ7563267820