Church Of Saint John The Evangelist

Church of Saint John the Evangelist, Desborough Road

Designed in 1901 by William Douglas Caröe, this church is constructed in English bond red brick with limestone dressings and red clay-tiled roofs. The building comprises a nave with narrow aisles (shorter than the nave and under the same roofline), choir and lower sanctuary, a north-east organ chamber and vestries. The west end with tower and south-east chapel were not executed as originally designed.

The north side facing features buttressing to the nave, which has two-light windows with cusped Y-tracery. To the east, the organ chamber projects under a catslide roof with narrow lancet windows. Further east stands a vestry block with a rounded eastern end, embattled parapet and a ribbon of cusped windows in square-headed openings. At the west end, a brick porch (probably added after Caröe) is attached to a plain stepped brick wall. The south side has two pairs of Y-tracery cusped windows towards the west, one buttress, and two lower-set secondary windows that are square-headed with timber mullion and transoms. The choir features a two-light cusped Y-tracery window above a projection where a chapel was intended. A large seven-light east window lights the gable of the choir, which is considerably taller than the lower-roofed sanctuary. The sanctuary has three-light square-headed north and south windows with reticulated tracery. Its blind east wall displays a shallow embattled gable decorated with a brick cross. A one-light bellcote straddles the roof ridge, marking the division between nave and choir.

The interior is painted white with bare brick and stone to the arches. The chancel arch is much narrower than the nave and features inventive mouldings. Beyond it lies a further, lower arch demarcating the division between choir and sanctuary, which has a much lower roof than the choir. The east wall contains a shallow stone-framed recess decorated with fleurons, evidently intended for a reredos. The three-bay arcades to the aisles are tall with lozenge-shaped piers extending upwards as brick shafts supporting the braces of an open roof. This roof comprises arch-braced trusses with a king post above the collar flanked by queen posts with two-way braces to the upper purlins. The organ chamber on the north side occupies the east bay of the north aisle with a two-bay stone-arched opening into it. The choir has low north and south aisles, the north aisle giving access to steps down to the vestry. Over the choir roof is a boarded wagon roof with deep arch-braces and a wall-plate carved with fleurons; the sanctuary has a simple, low-pitched rafter roof.

The church contains a number of good quality wooden fittings including the sanctuary rail, reading desk, choir stalls and a particularly ornate polygonal pulpit. The pulpit narrows from base to top and is decorated with richly carved overlapping traceried panels with ogee arches. The octagonal font has a moulded base. In the sanctuary stands a triple sedilia with low transverse arches between each seat, the rear walls of the seat recesses being cusped. The north wall features an aumbry with a timber door and good ferramenta. The choir has a floor of patterned grey and cream tiles, whilst the nave has a woodblock floor with wooden chairs for seating.

William Douglas Caröe (1857–1938) was a leading church architect at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. He was articled to Edmund Kirby of Liverpool in 1879–80 but transferred his articles in 1881 to the great Gothic revivalist J L Pearson, remaining until 1883. After extensive continental travel between 1877 and 1882, he established his practice in London in 1883, developing a prolific church-building and restoration practice. He became architect to the deans and chapters of Southwell, Hereford, Brecon and Exeter, and from 1895 was architect to both the Charity Commission and the Ecclesiastical Commission. Caröe is noted for his freely-treated and inventive Gothic, exemplified here by the unusual differential heights of the choir and sanctuary, and details such as the pulpit and treatment of the chancel arch. The church is designated at Grade II as an inventive and interesting design by a leading late Gothic Revival architect, although sadly not completed to his intended designs, and for its number of good fixtures and furnishings.