Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is an Anglican parish church with work spanning the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, substantially restored in 1905. The building comprises a nave with north aisle and mortuary chapel, chancel, west tower, and south porch.

The walls are constructed of coursed limestone rubble except for the south wall of the chancel porch and north aisle, which use coursed squared and dressed limestone. The tower and mortuary vault are built in ashlar with a stone slate roof. The nave and chancel share one continuous roof with stepped coping and roll cross saddles to the gable ends.

The south wall of the nave features a Decorated pointed 2-light window and a small Tudor-arched window in the upper right. A plank door with studded fillets sits within a 13th-century flat-chamfered pointed surround, sheltered by a 13th-century porch with an almost round-headed entrance featuring a deep flat chamfer. The porch's left-hand return has a 13th-century single-light with an ogee-arched head, while the right-hand return has a 13th-century lancet. Access to the vault is via a lean-to structure to the left of the porch with timber uprights and curving braces at the top.

The chancel has side buttresses. Its south wall contains a single light with an ogee-curved cinquefoil head, a Perpendicular 2-light window with Tudor-arched surround (formerly lighting a rood loft), and a Perpendicular 2-light east window. A projecting chimney stack occupies the lower portion of the north side.

The north aisle has a Decorated 2-light east window and a similar window on its north side. A part-glazed door with fillets sits within a 13th-century pointed-arched surround with scroll-moulded hood. At the west end is a trefoil-headed 13th-century lancet. The late 19th-century mortuary vault features a blocked pointed-arched entrance to the gable end.

The 15th-century three-stage tower is fitted with diagonal buttresses and contains a 2-light Decorated west window. The first stage above has a single 4-centred arched window. Perpendicular 3-light belfry windows have blind central and blind tracery windows with wooden louvres beneath a crocketed canopy. The tower is topped with a battlemented parapet with crocketed finials.

Interior

The chancel is 2 bays with a 15th-century roof featuring two moulded tie beams supported on braces from 15th-century carved stone corbels, three in the form of angels and two with brattished decoration. Arch-braced collar beams each carry a central rosette. The roof has a single purlin and single tier of curved windbracing.

The nave is 2½ bays with facsimile king post roof trusses inserted in 1905. The north aisle has an early compartmented lean-to roof with moulded tie beams. Three-bay nave arcade of wide 13th-century Transitional round-headed arches of 2 orders. The tower arch is 4-centred Perpendicular, matching arches on the north and south sides of the tower. The nave is flagged throughout.

Possibly medieval lozenge-shaped monochrome tiles in black, red and yellow—arranged to create a three-dimensional effect—survive in the chancel. A trefoil-headed piscina exists in the south wall of the nave near the pulpit. The south wall of the chancel contains a mutilated 13th-century piscina with trefoil head and aumbry. A 15th-century aumbry on the north side of the chancel has an inset door with finely carved pierced tracery. Two Tudor roses are set into the east wall of the chancel.

Two wooden sculptures occupy the north and south walls of the chancel respectively, probably 15th-century Flemish work, depicting the Virgin and Child with St Anne, the Resurrection, mounted on brattished stone bases. A wooden carving of Christ and a lamb appears on the north wall.

A 14th-century octagonal limestone font with two trefoil-headed panels to each face stands at the west end of the nave.

Early 20th-century fittings include pews, choir stalls with reused moulded medieval rails, an octagonal wooden pulpit and screen with linenfold panelling dividing the nave from the chancel, and communion rails. An early 20th-century screen with linenfold panelling also incorporates some reused 15th-century panelling in the choir stalls.

A late Elizabethan holy table with bulbous legs and carved decoration is present.

Wall paintings survive on the south wall, the clearest showing a kneeling lady and the monogram 'I.H.S.' Further wall paintings on the nave north wall include a Catherine wheel and traces of text with decorative border. Additional fragments appear over the nave arcade.

A white marble monument to Edward, Earl Ellenborough (died 1871), former Governor General of India, occupies the north wall of the aisle to the right of the blocked entrance to his mortuary chapel. A small window at the west end of the north aisle contains brightly coloured decorative glass with Lord Ellenborough's cypher and coronet.