Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

Anglican Parish Church, with origins possibly earlier than the 12th century, developed into its present complex plan by the late 15th century. The building was heavily restored by the architect George Gilbert Street in the 1870s—one of the cases that prompted William Morris to found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

The church is built of coursed rubble and ashlar, with lead and copper roofs concealed behind parapets. It is a large Cotswold wool church, roughly cruciform in plan with a central tower and spire. The structure comprises a five-bay aisled and clerestoried nave, north and south chapels, a three-storey south porch, and the Gild Chapel to the south west.

From the 12th century survives the mighty crossing tower and the mid-12th-century west door, which features a typical inner order of beak-heads and an outer order of chevron decoration; similar chevron decoration appears around windows in the tower. The rest of the exterior is largely Perpendicular in character. The clerestory, the heightening of the tower, and the addition of the spire were envisaged by 1396. The south porch is magnificent, with an elegant tracery-panelled facade, crocketed finial, and canopy work, though the three large figures above it have 19th-century heads. The Gild Chapel was started in the early 13th century, extended westward, and incorporated with the church in the 15th century, when it was reduced from the west. Its south door is Early English in style, with a defaced Rood above. A fan-vaulted porch leads to the interior.

Inside, the low 12th-century crossing arches are partly blocked to north and south to support the added weight of the tower and spire. The 12th-century billet mould and roof-lines can be traced across the stair-turret at the south west corner, which partly masks the west crossing arch. The tympanum of its doorway matches the design of the adjacent capitals, suggesting the irregularity was a design error rather than accidental. Tall arches with 15th-century label-heads topped with amusing carved hats support a 15th-century tie-beam roof. The arcades opening into the non-parallel Gild Chapel feature unusual capitals, empiric solutions to the spatial awkwardness. Between the south transept and the porch lies the Chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury, raised on a crypt, with some surviving wall-paintings. At the east end of the north arcade is a chantry with restored polychrome wooden screens and a stone canopy over the altar, now known as the Chapel of St Peter and restored by Street in 1873. The south transept and south chapel unusually retain their accumulated tomb-chests, including a large example in the south transept with colour and shield-bearing angels beneath crocketed canopies. A wide many-cusped relieving arch appears on the east wall of the south transept. A magnificent monument to the Tanfield family (1628) in the north chapel features cadavers below and a wrought-iron palisade.

The church contains very numerous fittings, including an excellent font with a Rood, a Perpendicular pulpit (restored 1870), medieval glass in the tracery lights of the west and east windows, a Hardman east window, much Kempe glass, and many memorials. Among the notable monuments are one to Christopher Kempster (died 1715), a local quarryman and favourite of Wren who worked at St Paul's Cathedral, and the Harman memorial of circa 1569 on the north wall, which features Gill-like Red Indians in relief. The south wall of the Gild Chapel is lined with roughly similar pedimented tomb-chests, mostly to the Sylvester family, with a similar chest also present in the south choir aisle.