Church Of Saint John The Baptist Entrance, Gate Piers, Gates And Flanking Walls

The Church of Saint John the Baptist entrance, consisting of gate piers, gates, and flanking walls, is part of the former parish of Godolphin. It dates to approximately 1850 and may have been designed by William White. The walls are constructed of granite rubble with dressed granite quoins, doorways, windows, and weatherings. The roofs are slate, with coped gable ends, and the nave roof extends over the aisles with a lower pitch, while a lower-level roof covers the chancel. A double bellcote sits above the west gable.

The church's plan is nearly symmetrical, featuring a porch towards the west end of the north wall, nave-length arcades, and a chancel projecting at the middle east end, linked to the nave by a chancel arch. It is built in the Early English style. The north front has three bays with lancet windows and buttresses. A gable-ended porch is located to the right, with a moulded, pointed doorway and open square grid doors. The south wall mirrors the north, with four similar bays. The west front, facing the road, has a tall central gable surmounted by a bellcote, and a tall two-light window with foiled tracery under a pointed arch with hoodmould. Buttresses support the arcades, and paired lancets are present in the aisles. Similar windows are also found at the east end of the aisles. The chancel possesses a three-light window with trefoil-headed lights in the east gable, a paired lancet window to the north wall, and a shouldered, arched priests doorway to the south wall. All windows have diamond leaded panes.

Inside, the nave is lofty with a scissor-braced roof structure over straight bracing springing from corbels within the arcade spandrels of the four-bay pointed arcades with moulded arches on round piers and moulded capitals. Painted texts are on the architraves. A holy water stoup is located beside the north doorway in the porch. Original fittings include a round, funnel-shaped granite font on a moulded base over a rectangular plinth, pitch pine pews with ends resembling andirons, and an octagonal pulpit carried on four engaged shafts, gifted by the parishioners in 1903 in memory of Reverend W.T. Grear.

The entrance gateway is characterized by square gate piers with round heads. Wrought iron gates feature scrolled central details and top rails. An arched iron overthrow with a scrolled lamp holder sits between the piers. Flanking the gateway, the walls, locally known as a hedge, are cyma shaped in plan and built of roughly squared, vertically set granite. This church represents a delightfully simple building incorporating essential elements of ecclesiastical style considered important for an Anglican church in the mid-19th century.