Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist stands on the east side of High Street in Windsor. It is a large parish church of two distinct periods: rebuilt in 1820–22 by architect Charles Hollis, with Jeffry Wyatt acting as a consultant, and substantially remodelled in 1869–73 when Samuel Sanders Teulon added a new chancel and undertook major restoration work.

The 1820–22 church is constructed of large blocks of fine ashlar. The circa 1870 additions use small squared grey stone blocks with Bath stone dressings. The roof is slate throughout. The building measures 26 metres long by 18 metres wide.

The plan comprises a west tower with flanking vestibules, a six-bay nave and aisles, a chancel with five-sided apse, a south-east chapel with entrance vestibule, and north vestries.

The exterior presents a flat, tripartite elevation to High Street, dominated by the central west tower. The tower rises in four stages. The ground floor has a square-headed entrance doorway flanked by two thick decorated bands. Above this is a stage containing a two-light window under a square head, followed by a clock stage with an unusual thin glazed band beneath the clock face. The uppermost stage is a tall, stately belfry with corner projections of foiled cross-section that rise above the crenellated parapet to tall octagonal pinnacles. The parapets to the tower and vestibules have triangular-headed merlons.

The vestibules flanking the tower each have a west-facing entrance. Above each entrance is a three-light window with plain cast-iron mullions and uncusped arches. The returns of the vestibules also have doorways with ogee hoods above, and a further three-light window of the same design.

Along the side walls, buttresses with an offset halfway up demarcate the bays. Windows are arranged in two tiers of two lights with Decorated and Perpendicular stone tracery installed during the 1870 restoration. The lower windows light the aisles beneath the internal galleries; the upper ones light the space above them. The much lower chancel sits at street level. Its apse displays tall two-light windows with flowing tracery in the early fourteenth-century manner. A metal ventilator surmounts the chancel ridge.

The interior of the 1820 building is large and spacious, made rather dark by extensive stained glass and the absence of a clerestory. Its dominant feature is the row of tall, slender cast-iron quatrefoil columns that rise to the roof springing. The nave and aisles are spanned by cast-iron trusses with arch-braces and traceried panelling in the spandrels. A tall arch with a four-centred moulded head and polychrome voussoirs frames the opening to the added chancel.

The chancel is highly embellished in High Victorian fashion. Barley-sugar columns at the apse angles carry standing angel figures. Angels also feature around the chancel at wall-plate level. Encaustic tiles cover the chancel floor. The nave and aisles are paved with coloured tiles to the west end and stone further east.

The east end contains a series of mosaic panels by Antonio Salviati beneath the windows. In the centre these form a reredos depicting the Agnus Dei and Pelican in her Piety. The other faces of the apse each have a pair of panels with adoring angels.

South of the chancel stands the royal pew with low screens to its two arches. These screens were carved by Grinling Gibbons for the chapel at Windsor Castle, where he received payment for work in 1680–82. Two of the reliefs depict the Pelican in its Piety; the third shows foliage. The screens were given to St John's by George III. The screen in the chancel arch dates to 1898 and was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield.

Within the church body, fixtures were renewed during Teulon's 1869–73 restoration. The stone pulpit has four open sides and is embellished with barley-sugar columns that echo the shafts in the chancel. The galleries were retained, reseated, and refronted, with new open benches of square ends provided. The church contains a large number of modest wall monuments, many relocated from the previous church on the site and dating to the early seventeenth century.

A large painting of the Last Supper hangs over the west end, attributed to Franz de Cleyn (1588–1658), and was restored in 2003. The organ is a large three-manual-and-pedal instrument by A. Hunter and Son, revoiced in 1936. The church retains an extensive collection of stained glass. Wooden staging has been recently installed at the east end of the nave for an altar.

Before the early nineteenth century, the church consisted of a nave, chancel, and aisles, each under a separate gable and flush with one another at the east end. By 1818, the condition of the building prompted a proposal to rebuild, executed in 1820–22. Charles Hollis, a little-known architect who had exhibited designs at the Royal Academy in 1801–03, was accepted for the work; Jeffry Wyatt was involved as a consultant. The church was completed in 1822 and consecrated on 22 June by the Bishop of Salisbury. Hollis also designed Windsor Bridge (three iron arches, 1822–24) and the classical Church of All Saints, Poplar, with its parsonage house (1821–23). In the 1820s he practised from various London addresses, but his name disappeared from directories thereafter; his death is presumed to have occurred around 1830.

Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–73) was a well-known and active church architect who worked primarily for Low Church clients. His work is often characterised by structural polychromy and exotic architectural details, exemplified here at St John's, one of his very late works.

The church is a product of two contrasting nineteenth-century schemes: the circa 1820 church with box pews and no substantial chancel represented everything Victorian clergymen and architects came to dislike. Teulon's radical Gothic remodelling circa 1870 resulted in a harsh juxtaposition of two very different aesthetics. Teulon was noted for these thorough recastings of churches, and St John's exemplifies his approach.