Church Of St John The Evangelist

Church of St John the Evangelist

An Anglican parish church built between 1866 and 1868 by J.L. Pearson for the Everett family. The church is constructed of dressed limestone with a tiled roof and an ashlar spire.

The building is a large cruciform church with an aisled nave, south porch, and a spire rising from the crossing tower. It is designed in the Geometric Decorated style.

The south porch is notably large and gabled, featuring a moulded pointed doorway with attached shafts and angle buttresses. Three small lancets sit above the door. The south aisle contains four two-light pointed windows. The south transept has a large four-light Decorated-style window to the south and a smaller four-light window to the east, with a rectangular stair turret in the east angle.

The high chancel has two three-light Decorated-style windows to the south with angle buttresses to the east, and a large five-light Decorated-style window. The north vestry features cusped lancets and a flat roof, with a three-light pointed window to the north side of the chancel. The gabled organ chamber has cusped lancets to a plate tracery window, a pointed doorway, and a clasping buttress with quatrefoils lighting the stair to the organ loft. The north transept displays a large rose window set in a round-arched panel with roll moulding. The north aisle has six two-light Decorated-style windows, paired in bays separated by buttresses with gablets.

The west window of the nave is five-light, with two-light windows to the aisles. The roof has a moulded eaves cornice, steep pitch, ceramic ridge cresting, and coped verges with cross finials. The two-stage crossing tower has pairs of two-light Decorated-style windows to the upper stage, a string course to the parapet, and a broach spire with two-light gablets.

Interior

The porch has a ribbed pointed barrel-vaulted roof and a pointed inner door with attached shafts, flanked by double planked doors with ornamental hinges.

The well-proportioned nave and aisles feature a three-bay nave roof with arched braced collar trusses and scissor rafters. Three-bay north and south arcades have cylindrical piers with moulded capitals supporting double-chamfered arches with continuous hoodmoulds. The aisles have lean-to rafter roofs. Walls are of plain ashlar with a sill string course and tiled floors throughout.

The chancel is separated from the nave by a high double-chamfered arch with attached shafts. The crossing is rib vaulted on arches with attached shafts. The north and south transepts have pointed barrel-vaulted roofs with herringbone boarding.

The short chancel contains a fine two-bay quadripartite roof with nailhead ornament. The windows feature rere arches on attached shafts, and the floor is laid with polychrome tiles. The walls display red stencilled decoration depicting saints and Old Testament scenes, possibly by Clayton and Bell. A floral carved stone frieze commemorates A.J. Everett, who died in 1907. The reredos bears further stencilled decoration and three pointed arches.

A fine organ by Gray and Davison, with decorated pipes, fills the arch on the north side of the chancel and extends to the east side of the north transept. Cast and wrought-iron screens enclose the transepts.

The south transept serves as the Anzac chapel, established in memory of Australians who died in camps here during the First World War.

A square chamfered font with shafts and stencilled decoration stands at the west end.

The church contains fine stained glass by Clayton and Bell and two Kempe windows dating to around 1908. Six bells hang in the tower; these date from 1641 to 1723 and were brought here from the Church of St. Leonard.

History

The church was built at a cost of over £7,000 and paid for by the Everett family of Sutton Veny House. It was erected as a memorial to Joseph Everett, who died in 1865, and to replace the Church of St. Leonard.