Church Of St John The Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist is an Anglican parish church with significant fabric from the Saxon period, the 13th century, the 15th century, and a rebuilt tower dating to 1667. It was restored in 1859 by T.H. Wyatt. The church is constructed of rubble stone with a tiled roof featuring coped verges. Its layout includes a chancel, a nave with a low south tower over a porch, and a 19th-century north aisle.

The two-stage tower has diagonal buttresses, a Tudor-arched doorway with cusped spandrels and a square hoodmould, an offset bellstage with recessed chamfered mullioned louvres (two-light on the south and east, a two-light Tudor-arched opening to the west), a sundial below, and a circular gilded clock face on the south side. The tower is finished with a plain parapet and saddleback coping. The south side of the nave contains a two-light square-headed window with cusped lights to the left of the tower, and two further two-light square-headed windows with cusped lights and hoodmoulds to the right. The south side of the chancel has two pairs of cusped ogee lancets, while the east end features a 19th-century plate tracery window. Visible Saxon long-and-short work is present at the corners of the east end. A 19th-century vestry is attached to the north side, boasting cusped lancets and a pointed doorway. The 1859 north aisle has three 16th-century style two-light windows and one single-light, all with square hoodmoulds. A quatrefoil decorates the west end. The west end of the nave is distinguished by a cross window containing cusped pointed lights and a hoodmould with unfinished terminals, topped with a trefoil.

The porch’s pointed, chamfered inner doorway has a 19th-century door, with a plain pointed stoup to the right. Inside, the nave features a 19th-century seven-bay boarded vaulted roof. The 19th-century north aisle is separated from the nave by a four-bay double-chamfered pointed arcade on cylindrical piers. A 19th-century double-chamfered chancel arch leads to the chancel, which itself has a wagon roof and a polychrome tiled floor. Fittings include 19th-century pews, late 19th-century 16th-century style panelling in the chancel, a chamfered pointed piscina on the south wall, and a 19th-century stone pulpit with open arcading. A restored 12th-century cylindrical stone font stands in the nave. Stained glass windows, dating from the 1880s and 1890s, are present in the chancel. Monuments include a segmental eared tablet to Matthew Pitts, who died in 1746, and another to Edmund Pitts, who died in 1770, both in the nave. A marble monument to Ruth Moore, who died in 1806, with fluted pilasters and a frieze, is located in the north aisle.