St John'S Seminary

St. John's Seminary is a seminary founded in 1891 and built in 1895 by F. A. Walters in Dutch and Jacobean style. It stands at Wonersh near Guildford Road.

The building is constructed in red brick with gauged and ribbed brick dressings, stone frontispieces, and stone coping on the chapel, with slate roofs throughout. The composition comprises a large rectangular main block with projecting lower wings to the sides enclosing a courtyard, a chapel positioned to the left at right angles to the wing, and a service wing with extensions set back to the right.

The main range rises three storeys and attics over a basement, while the wings are two storeys over basements. Tall stone-banded front stacks rise on the main range—one to the left and two to the right—decorated with moulded string courses. Further stacks occupy the court sides of the wings in the re-entrant angles with the main range.

The main block front is articulated by eleven bays separated by pilaster piers beneath small gable and pediment offsets at first-floor height. Narrower linking bays at the ends connect to the wings. The roof carries ten pedimented dormers with a further row of flat-roofed dormers behind. Stone banding flanks the central three bays. A deep moulded string course runs over the basement, and cornices above the ground and first floors display dentilled decoration at the main eaves. Fenestration comprises segmental-head glazing bar sashes, the lower halves now plate glass, with keystoned gauged brick heads above. Ground-floor windows sit in arched recessed panels with impost mouldings and gauged brick "sunburst" patterns to the heads. Basement windows are lancet-headed.

The central three bays rise under a shaped gable with flanking scalloped parapets. A pulvinated frieze ornaments the second floor, and a segmental pediment crowns the central second-floor window. The first-floor central window is tripartite beneath a swan's-neck pediment. A flat portico of rubbed brick at ground level is approached by a stone flight with banded newel posts and square pyramidal scroll-flanked finials. Jacobean-style half-fluted Ionic pilasters on pedestals support a pulvinated frieze and flank a moulded brick arched entrance to the porch. A stone frontispiece to the rear of the porch features similar pedestal pilasters flanking panelled double doors beneath an oval fanlight.

The projecting wings are simpler in design, articulated by rusticated quoins on piers with finials above on angle piers. Each wing displays four gabled bays with a larger bay to the re-entrant angle. String courses run above the ground floors, with sash fenestration throughout. Wing ends feature banded stone decoration to arched upper panels enclosing roundel windows, with irregular fenestration below.

The chapel to the left connects via a lower linking range topped by a thermal window and three single-light cambered-head windows. A gabled-end entrance with a porch crosses the ground floor beneath shaped pediments and spherical finials. The chapel comprises eight bays with plinth and sill mouldings. Banded, scroll-topped buttresses alternate with round-arched, gauged-brick-headed leaded windows; a triple blind arcade occupies the gable end. A Dutch gable at the end carries spike and sphere finials. A copper spirelet mounted over a domed lantern with open sides rises from the roof ridge to the left.