Church Of St John The Evangelist

The Church of St John the Evangelist is an Anglican church constructed between 1851 and 1855 by B Ferrey, with a North Lady Chapel added in 1883 and subsequently rebuilt in 1955. The church is built of roughly coursed and squared limestone with ashlar dressings, featuring dry slate roofs with coped gable ends. It is designed in the Early Pointed style.

The plan includes a nave, north and south aisles, a Lady Chapel as an addition to the north aisle, north and west porches, and a tower at the east end of the north aisle. The exterior features corner angle buttresses, and the aisles have two-light windows with plate tracery. The chancel has a four-light east window with sexfoil tracery, lancet windows to the sides, and two-light end aisle windows with bar tracery and hoodmoulds, all windows being cusped. Pointed-arched moulded doorways are present, with the east porch doorway showing head stops to the hoodmoulds and stepped lancets above. A cusped rose window sits above the east gable of the nave. The Lady Chapel contains lancets to its north wall and a cusped west rose window. The three-stage tower has weathered corner buttresses and louvred two-light traceried windows with hoodmoulds; it is topped with a broach spire from which lucarnes spring from a narrower upper stage. A moulded pointed arched doorway is found on the north side of the tower.

Inside, the walls are plastered, and the roof is an open timber scissor-truss construction. A tall, moulded chancel arch is present, lacking capitals, and five-bay arcades feature octagonal piers. Fittings include a limestone font, a high altar reredos from 1869 with carved figures, and a former chancel screen of ironwork on a wooden traceried base, now serving as a screen to the Lady Chapel. An octagonal pulpit from 1869 has a top panel decorated with open trefoils, painted circa 1900 in a Quattrocento style. A squat, early English style octagonal font is accompanied by a carved cover made by the Pinwell sisters. A screen in the south chapel, dating to 1914, features a triptych painted in the Quattrocento style. A screen between the chancel and vestry has bar tracery above a bench. Stained glass includes a 1865 east window depicting the evangelists by Hardman, three south aisle windows from 1867-1870, and a former east window from 1862 now situated in the south aisle.

The church’s architect, Ferrey, was a pupil of AWN Pugin.