Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is an Anglican parish church begun around 1170, with significant additions in the 14th and 15th centuries, and comprehensively restored in 1850 by William Butterfield. It is built of limestone ashlar with stone slate roofs and lead coverings to the aisles.

The church comprises a nave with wide north and south aisles, a south porch, a chancel with a 19th-century north vestry, and a west tower. The south porch dates to the 15th century and features a four-centred hollow chamfered arch with angle buttresses. The south aisle contains one 14th-century three-light window with elaborate tracery and a 14th-century east window to the north aisle; the remaining windows are of two lights. The chancel has a 19th-century three-light east window, two-light windows, and an ovolo-moulded low side window, with a south priest's door. A tall chimney rises from the south-east buttress of the aisle. The tower is of three stages with angle buttresses, perforated bell openings, and a crenellated parapet; it has a three-light west window.

The interior contains a fine inner doorway of the late 12th century, lined internally with a 14th-century arch. The outer orders display continuous chevron decoration enclosed by a torus bearing beak-head ornament, with scalloped capitals and nook shafts. The nave arcades consist of three bays with plain round arches supported on a variety of reworked late 12th-century capitals and round columns. The open roof, also dating to around 1200, spans four bays and features billet-moulded tie beams and inner wall plates, with trussed rafters incorporating curved ashlars and knee braces to collars, and single clasped purlins. Curved windbraces appear above the purlins. A low 14th-century piscina, probably reset, has carving in a lobed bowl in the south aisle. The chancel's south window sill has been lowered to form sedilia and piscina. The chancel arch is chamfered and round, matching the chancel's width. The roof over the eastern bay of the chancel is a 19th-century trussed rafter design underdrawn with plaster. A stone 12th-century guilloche string runs across the east end. The tower arch likely dates to the 15th century with three orders dying into imposts.

The porch windows contain 15th-century yellow stained glass depicting the King of Heaven with two kneeling angels, and a side window with a head, crown, and other motifs. The chancel windows are by Wailes.

The font is a fine 12th-century drum carved with twelve apostles standing within a continuous arcade, reset on a 19th-century base. The pulpit is a 19th-century oak octagon on a stone base. Five hatchments hang beneath the tower: (a) Ernle impaling Hungerford; (b) Yerbury impaling Ernle, for Elizabeth Warriner, died 1757; (c) Gifford Warriner, died 1787; (d) Yerbury impaling Long, for Anne Warriner, died 1815; and (e) Warriner and Ernle impaling or, unidentified. Royal arms of George III of Hanover are displayed over the chancel arch.

Monuments include an alabaster surround to a slate panel with gilded lettering in the north aisle, commemorating Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes (1st Commander of the RFC, died 1954) and Sergeant Leslie Thinwood (died 1945). In the south aisle is a wall monument of around 1880 in a limestone arched recess between crenellated pilasters, inscribed to Isaac Warriner of Conock (died 1752), and a white marble tablet on black by Denman of London, commemorating Major General C.S. Fagan of Conock Manor House (died 1842). Beneath the tower are a white marble tablet of the 18th century to William Hayward (died 1765) and family, and a limestone monument with a gadrooned top and fluted pilasters either side of a painted raised panel, to Richard Yerbury (died 1740).

The chancel contains a fine 17th-century oak armchair.

The church was acquired by Llanthony Priory in 1167.