Parish Church Of St John The Baptist

The parish church of St John the Baptist is a building of group value, dating primarily to the 15th century, with substantial alterations in the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The west tower’s upper stages are from the 17th century. The church displays Perpendicular style architecture.

The main body of the church comprises a five-bay aisled nave built in 1830, designed by John Pinch of Bath for the Reverend Augustus Asgill Colville. It is constructed of ashlar, featuring a crenellated parapet and crocketted finials over weathered buttresses. Tall, three-light Perpendicular style windows are present. A projecting porch with crocketted corner finials, Gothick rainwater heads, a Gothick plaster vault, and Gothick panelled doors is situated in the second bay from the left. The three-stage west tower incorporates a lower stage likely from the 15th century using freestone, with upper stages in 17th-century ashlar. Set-back buttresses cap the lower two stages with diagonal finials. The upper stage features three-light segmental headed windows with Somerset tracery. A high parapet is topped with moulded coping and crocketted corner and centre finials on panelled dies. A niche on the second stage contains a statue of Charles II, who donated three of the eight bells. A plain, two-bay chancel was added in 1924, featuring Perpendicular style tracery, two buttresses at the east end, and an arched path. The Lady Chapel, added to the south in 1936, incorporates a niche at the east end for a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a canopied screen. A notable detail of Pinch's north aisle wall is a cusp-headed niche with an ogee label.

Inside, the church features tall, slender arcades, originally with galleries (comparable to St Mary's Bathwick in Bath). Panelled ceilings have enriched floral bosses, and corbelled braces with openwork tracery. The chancel has a blind tracery ogee pattern vault. A Norman font of plain chalice-type design with a scallop band below the rim remains. Many 19th-century fittings, including the pulpit, have been retained. The tower contains the remains of a 13th-century wooden effigy of a knight. Numerous memorials are present, especially along the north wall, including one dated 1678 with a broken segmental pediment, Ionic pilasters on angel busts, and swagged sides. Other memorials commemorate John Smith (died 1829), featuring an urn with a putto, and several members of the Savage family, with two from the 18th century and two in Gothick style.

The churchyard rises well above street level and contains numerous early 19th-century headstones, 11 chest tombs (mostly 18th and early 19th century), and one square altar tomb with a draped urn capping (for the Millard family, dating from around 1728-29). The church shares architectural affinities with St Mary's Bathwick in Bath, also designed by Pinch. Similar features are found at the Vicarage (No. 83 North Road) and No. 37 Priory Close. To the west, a low, early 19th-century chest tomb stands on six metal balls (one missing). To the southwest is a memorial to the 12 miners killed in 1839 when the rope was severed; the slab covering the memorial was renewed in 1965.