Church Of St John The Evangelist

Church of St John the Evangelist, Redhill

This is a prominent Victorian town church standing on a rise on Church Road. It was built in two major phases reflecting the rapid growth of Redhill following the arrival of the London to Brighton railway in 1841.

The original church was built in 1842–43 by James Thomas Knowles, a London architect who adapted an unused design for a church at Williton in Somerset. It was consecrated on 30 September 1843 and a new parish was formed the following year. In 1860, aisles were added by Robert Hesketh, a local architect from Earlswood Mount. The most significant transformation came in 1889–91 when John Loughborough Pearson, one of the greatest 19th-century church architects, rebuilt the nave and chancel and reused Hesketh's aisles. Pearson added the steeple in 1895.

The church displays its two main building phases clearly in its exterior. The early aisles are faced with knapped flint with limestone dressings and are relatively low, each with its own gabled roof and two-light windows in the style of circa 1300 with quatrefoils in their heads. Pearson's later work is of stock brick with limestone dressings. His chancel is notably lofty and features large Geometrical windows, including an impressive east window of six lights with multiple cusped circles in its head. The chancel has large stepped and gabled angle buttresses at each corner, topped by octagonal stone pinnacles. The tall west tower has three stages and angle buttresses with numerous offsets that create a strongly tapering effect. It contains a richly moulded south doorway under a triangular gabled head, two pairs of two-light windows above, and belfry windows with pairs of two-light openings under embracing frames with Y-tracery. The ribbed stone spire is relatively short in relation to the tower and has large octagonal corner pinnacles with spirelet cappings and an elongated two-light lucarne on the cardinal faces. All roofs are slate.

The interior is dominated by Pearson's work. The chancel is stone-vaulted with quadripartite bays and is slightly lower and narrower than the nave. The nave has a wooden king-post roof resting on stone transverse arches carried on shafts attached to Hesketh's arcade and descending to the ground. The arcade features finely moulded arches and rich foliage capitals to short circular piers. The transverse arches create a series of frames viewing the chancel from the west entrance. The aisles have curved braced roofs with collars carrying two inclined struts. A stone gallery with canted ends at the west end rests on five arches. A clerestory contains two-light windows. The nave is floored with red, buff and black tiles. The stonework and rendered surfaces remain bare, as originally intended by the architects.

The church contains an exceptional collection of 19th-century furnishings and fittings. The seating is unusually finished with poppy-headed ends, a design choice that contributes considerably to the interior character. The font of 1882 by J. Whitehead features a large shell held by a kneeling angel, based on Bertel Thorwaldsen's early 19th-century font in Copenhagen Cathedral, a design copied in several English churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The principal focus is Pearson's gilded and painted reredos, a triptych presented in 1898, with a central panel depicting the Crucifixion flanked by the Agony in the Garden and the Entombment, hinged side panels showing the Nativity, Resurrection and other scenes, and above are representations of the Doctors of the Church, Christ, Moses, Elijah and angels. The stone pulpit with pierced sides and a carved panel depicting the Raising of Lazarus dates from 1882. An elaborate wrought-iron chancel screen on a low stone wall was erected in 1910, followed by a wrought-iron screen between the chancel and Lady Chapel in 1911. The stalls have poppy heads and traceried frontals.

The stained glass collection is particularly fine. Pearson designed several windows, including the east window of 1889, which together with the chancel side windows were made by Clayton and Bell. The west window, also by Clayton and Bell, dates from 1904. A more modern Goddard and Gibbs window is in the north aisle. The Father Willis organ was built in 1897.

The church and town of Redhill itself were products of the railway's arrival in 1841. In 1840, the decision was taken to build a church on Knobb's Hill, and Earl Somers, lord of the manor of Reigate, granted the lease of waste land with the consent of copyholder tenants. Lord Somers headed the subscription list with a donation of £1,000. When The Ecclesiologist reviewed the original Knowles church in 1843, it was critical, finding the details "very meagre" and disapproving of the open ground floor of the tower.

The inspiration for the late-Victorian remodelling came from the Reverend J.M. Gordon. John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97), who undertook the work, trained in the offices of Ignatius Bonomi in Durham and Anthony Salvin and Philip Hardwick in London, beginning practice in 1843. He was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1880 and is remembered for a series of exceptionally fine churches often displaying strong French influence. The spire at St John's has close similarities to, for instance, the spires at Saint-Étienne in Caen. Other characteristic Pearson features here are the stone-vaulted chancel and the transverse arches across the nave. Pearson's most celebrated work is Truro Cathedral, begun in 1880 and the first English cathedral built on a new site since Salisbury in the early 13th century.