Church Of St John

Church of St. John, Aust

A parish church with a 14th-century tower and the remainder mostly rebuilt in 1858. The building is constructed in snecked rubble with limestone dressings and slate roofs with coped verges, kneelers and decorative finials. The plan comprises a nave, north and south aisles, central tower, chancel, north porch and south vestry entered from the chancel.

The tower is in Decorated style. The west front features three gables with a three-light cusped tracery window in the centre and two-light windows to each side, all with hood moulds having foliate stops and relieving arches. A small central trefoil-headed window in a similar surround appears at upper level, with plain trefoils to the side gables. The tower has a plinth, weathered string, weathered buttresses (diagonal at corners to all facades), a stair turret with slit window to the north-east, and two-light windows with bell louvres and cusped tracery at upper level on all four sides. It is topped with battlements and pinnacles at all corners except the turret, and a ribbed spire with finial and cockerel weathervane.

The south aisle comprises three bays with three two-light windows in plain chamfered surrounds and an eaves cornice with foliate bosses. The north aisle is similar, with a two-light east window having hood mould, foliate stops and relieving arch, and a trefoil-headed window above. The north porch is in the west bay with a pointed arched opening, hood mould with foliate stops, jamb shafts with foliate capitals and rosettes on the central order, and a plain shield in a quatrefoil above, with two-light windows in plain chamfered surrounds to each side. The east window of the south aisle is blocked by a later 19th-century gabled vestry in the same style.

The chancel has a three-light east window as on the west front, with a trefoil-headed lancet above in a hollow chamfered surround and cross finial. It has diagonal buttresses with elaborate pinnacles and finials, two single-light windows to the north and one to the south, all with foliate stops to the hood mould, and a balustrade above the cornice of colonnettes with coping and cast iron ridge coping.

The interior porch has a scissors truss roof and a plank door with decorative strap hinges, with foliage replacing rosettes in the same surround as the outer opening. The two-bay nave has plain piers with bases and foliate capitals, pointed arches and an arch-brace scissors truss roof with half shafts of Purbeck marble with foliate capitals and corbels under the arch-braces. The aisles comprise three bays up to the crossing with the same roof style and foliate corbels, with all windows in deep splayed reveals. The crossing has higher pointed chamfered arches to east and west and lower arches to north and south, with squints to north and south. A small door to the north opens to a rood stair, with an upper door in the north side. The ceiling is flat chamfered ribbed with a single leaf carved on each corbel.

The chancel has stone carving to the east wall below the window comprising small squares each with a leaf. All windows have slender jamb shafts of Purbeck marble with foliate capitals as imposts for moulded heads, a string course below the windows with rosettes at the east end, and the south vestry door in a segmental pointed head has a foliate stop ending the string course to the west. The three-bay roof has pierced quatrefoils below the cornice and moulded ribs dividing into nine panels with decorative bosses.

Fittings include a Norman bowl font (damaged and disused), a 16th-century carved altar table, a pair of 17th-century carved oak sanctuary chairs in the chancel from Aust church, a Jacobean box pew in the south aisle with panelling, butterfly hinges and knob finials, an octagonal font and pulpit contemporary with the rebuilding, a painted metal endowment board with pointed arch and ivy leaf border for John Hicks dated 1734, an early medieval stone coffin in the south aisle found during the rebuilding in the aisle wall, and an early 19th-century marble monument in the south aisle with draped urn to Thomas Johnson (1829) by Greenway of Bristol and Downend.