Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

Anglican parish church with a 15th-century tower and remainder rebuilt in 1844 by architects T.H. Wyatt and D. Brandon. The building is constructed of dressed limestone with a tiled roof.

The church comprises a nave and aisles, a chancel with a south chapel and north organ chamber, a north porch, and a south-west tower positioned over the entrance.

The 15th-century north-west tower is three stages tall with diagonal buttresses. It features a double-chamfered Tudor-arched west doorway with 19th-century double doors and ornamental hinges beneath a hoodmould. Above this sits a restored three-light Perpendicular window. The offset bellstage has two-light Perpendicular windows with decorative pierced louvres. A moulded string course carved with grotesque animals runs below the battlemented parapet, which has crocketed corner pinnacles. An octagonal stair turret with a battlemented parapet stands to the north side of the tower.

The south aisle displays four two-light Perpendicular-style windows and a cusped lancet to its left, with a moulded eaves cornice to the pitched roof. The south chapel contains two ogee cusped lancets and a two-light Perpendicular window to the east, with diagonal buttresses flanking the walls.

The presbytery has a Tudor-arched south doorway and an ogee lancet. Its east end features a three-light Perpendicular window with ogee tracery, while the north side has two ogee lancets. A blocking course with gothic lettering inscriptions runs along both sides.

The north aisle has four two-light Perpendicular windows with hoodmoulds. A central gabled porch with a moulded pointed doorway contains double doors with ornamental hinges. The porch has a coped verge with quatrefoil and lamb decoration. The west end displays a two-light Perpendicular window to the north aisle, three small cusped lancets, and a large two-light Perpendicular-style window to the nave.

The interior features an entrance in the tower with a carved ribbed ceiling with rosette bosses and a Tudor-style screen to the south aisle. Plain ashlar walls and tiled floors create an unusually broad open interior. The seven-bay nave has its westernmost bay partitioned by an ashlar wall with a pointed doorway and a painted inscription frieze, alongside a carved stone Royal Arms. A good hammer beam nave roof has carved spandrels. Six-bay north and south arcades rest on slender compound columns with foliated capitals and pointed arches.

A very tall, wide hollow and roll-moulded chancel arch with compound pilasters separates the nave from the chancel, which is the same width as the nave. The chancel displays a fine four-bay hammer beam roof with carved angels on the hammer beams. Two pointed arches lead to the south chapel and the north organ chamber and vestry, which have traceried screens. Painted biblical inscriptions appear on friezes, and a polychrome tiled floor includes some medieval tiles in the presbytery.

Fittings include a stone traceried reredos, good brass candelabras, a cylindrical stone pulpit with traceried panels, an octagonal stone font at the west end, and good-quality pews. The east window contains fine pictorial stained glass depicting The Crucifixion. The south chapel and west window contain 1860s glass. The vestry holds tablets from the earlier church: a classical marble tablet to Thomas Davis, died 1807, by H. Westmacott, and one to William Crumbleholme, died 1828, by Chapman of Frome. A 1727 stone baroque tablet with an illegible inscription also survives.

The rebuilding cost £5,100, which was paid for by the Dowager Marchioness of Bath.