Church Of St John The Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist is an Anglican parish church, dating to the 14th century, with significant alterations in the 17th century and a restoration in 1876. It is constructed of flint with limestone dressings, an ashlar tower, and has a tiled roof. The plan includes a nave, chancel, west tower, a north aisle and transept, and a south porch. The gabled south porch has a double-chamfered pointed doorway with a coped verge and a cross finial. The nave has restored two-light pointed windows with Y-tracery and hoodmoulds, with angle buttresses to the west. The chancel has a two-light window with Y-tracery, a buttress with offsets and rainwater heads dated 1876. The east end features two buttresses and a two-light 19th-century pointed window, above which is an incised tablet commemorating William Perry and John Bodenham, who paid for chancel repairs in 1696. A 19th-century two-light window is found on the north side of the chancel, and a lean-to vestry has a chamfered shouldered doorway and three shouldered windows. The north side of the nave contains two two-light windows with Y-tracery and a blocked pointed, chamfered doorway. The two-stage 14th-century west tower has diagonal buttresses with niches, a pentagonal stair turret with arrowloops, a heavily moulded plinth, and a blocked cyma-moulded doorway to the west. Above the doorway is a three-light Perpendicular window. The offset bell stage has three three-light square-headed windows with Tudor-arched lights and pierced decorative louvres, topped with a parapet and corner pinnacles. Inside, the three-bay nave features 19th-century crown post trusses and a scissor-rafter roof, and a tiled floor. Windows have restored 13th-century attached shafts and cusped inner openings. A wooden chancel screen with traceried openings, dating to 1899, is also present. The chancel has a polychrome tiled floor, a double-chamfered 19th-century arch to the vestry/organ chamber, and a roof similar to the nave. A trefoil piscina and sedilia are included beneath enriched pediments with pinnacles. From the nave into the tower there is a tall pointed opening with a hollow-chamfered arch on foliated corbels; the rib-vaulted ceiling springs from corbels with carved beasts and heraldic shields, whilst a Tudor arched, chamfered doorway gives access to the tower stairs on the north. A fine 12th-century Purbeck marble font in the tower has a central column with four shafts supporting a square bowl. The church also contains 19th-century pews and a pulpit, and chancel glass from the 1870s depicting the Parham family.