Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is an Anglican parish church of outstanding architectural and historical importance. The building dates from around the 10th century, with major construction in the 12th century, significant rebuilding in 1816, and restoration in 1876.

The exterior is rendered flint with limestone ashlar, roofed in lead. The church comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a chancel, a west tower of three stages, and a south porch. The south aisle contains a lancet window with a round hoodmould. Other windows in the nave and aisles are 15th-century work with square heads and cinquefoil or multifoil lights; the clerestory has windows of one or two lights. The chancel and north aisle also feature 15th-century pointed windows with two cinquefoil lights.

The tower is particularly significant. Its lowest stage dates to the 9th or 10th century and is strengthened by angle and clasped west buttresses. The third stage has a crenellated parapet and pierced transennae. Below these, on the north and south sides, are Anglo-Saxon two-light square-headed openings. The west door has simple keeled moulding. A sundial is set on the south-west tower buttress. The 18th and 19th centuries saw rebuilding of the south aisle and addition of the south porch. In 1816, a clerestory window and a window over the west door were added; both are round-headed without tracery. A triangular-headed slit light on the south side of the tower is now blocked.

The interior reveals the building's medieval origins. The nave, of three bays, has round arches of two unchamfered orders on scalloped capitals, one carved with Adam and Eve on the south arcade; the north arcade has round capitals. High openings probably mark the position of a former rood screen. The pointed chancel arch has two chamfered orders on scalloped corbels, one carved with a head.

The roof of four bays features cambered moulded tie beams with central pendants bracketed to wall posts on stone corbels. These ties carry moulded king posts and struts to low-pitched principals, also with pendents. The chancel has two bays with a fine depressed panelled plaster ceiling on a moulded cornice, and a priest's door on the south wall.

The church's fittings are outstanding and largely complete from the 1816 refitting. These include box pews, wall dado with carved leaf frieze, a high reader's desk and lectern on either side of the chancel arch approached by steps from the chancel, with tall backboards and sounders. In the chancel are choir pews, highly carved in Gothic design, with dado panelling extending to the east end and returning with Paternoster boards rising to an openwork ogee baldacchino on quatrefoil riddel posts. The communion rails have closely spaced turned balusters with applied trefoiled tops and are slightly depressed at the centre. A west gallery, added in 1821, carries an organ and has a concave panelled front.

The font, dating from around 1816, is a shallow octagonal limestone bowl on a tall stem, with a carved oak cover and iron point for suspension from the gallery soffit. The octagonal bowl is carved.

The glass includes fragments of 14th to 15th-century yellow stained glass in the east window, showing a bishop with crozier and sun and crowns in the window foils. The north aisle contains a Raising of Lazarus by Mayer & Co of Munich. A painting of the Royal Arms of George III is displayed over the chancel arch, along with three hatchments and four painted shields on corbel posts. Beneath the gallery are six shields commemorating benefactors of the 1816 refitting and two institution boards.

The church contains an exceptional collection of monuments. In the chancel are marble tablets to Stephen Hyde (1697), with arms on a broken pediment and fluted bell below the inscription; Edward Pocock (1726), with pilasters and segmental cornice; Reverend Richard Pocock (1787), in variegated marbles with a crest swept up to an urn and pinecone finial; Reverend Charles Soames (1894); Reverend Gordon Soames (1935); Reverend George Buxton (1881), a draped urn and tablet on black marble by Gaffin of London; Thomas Baskerville and family, with triple Gothic ogee niches and palm trees in relief, by J. Harris of Bath, sculptor to Queen Caroline; Reverend Charles Francis (1821), white marble Gothic openwork and niche with palm trees, also by Harris of Bath; Edward Courtman (1979), an oval slate panel; and Sir George Walker (1724), a black marble oval.

In the north aisle are monuments to General John Caccraft, a simple white sarcophagus by Harris of Bath; Henry Woodman and family (1823), a draped urn over panel by Harrison of Marlborough; Samuel Windsor (1893), with a lily on sarcophagus; William Young (1832), a Tudor panel by Harrison; Isaac White (1806), a crested panel; William Young and wife (1939); and William Baker (1729), painted limestone with a putto in the pediment.

The south aisle contains a War Memorial of black and white marbles and tablets to William Jones (1922).

Other furnishings include five red leather kneelers for the communion rail, dated 1797, and a painting of seated Charles I wearing the garter on his cloak with a tasselled noose.