Church Of St John And Adjoining Community Hall

The Church of St John and the adjoining Community Hall is a chapel of ease, now serving as a parish church and community hall. It was built between 1822 and 1823 by architect Thomas Hardwick, with additions made in 1846 and 1888. The structure is made of hammer-dressed calciferous sandstone sourced from Schoose and Hunday Quarries, featuring ashlar eaves, pilasters, and a plinth. The roof is covered with graduated green slate and has modillioned overhanging eaves and gable pediments.

The building has a 5-bay nave and chancel with a west portico, and a square ridge tower added in 1846 topped with a bell cupola. There is a north vestry and an attached community hall added in 1881 to the east.

The exterior includes double panelled west doors with a patterned over-light set in a stone architrave beneath a plain frieze and console-bracketed cornice. Flanking panelled doors are also located in stone architraves under large round-headed niches, all within a tetrastyle Tuscan portico. The tall round-headed side windows are framed in stone architraves.

Inside, the church features galleries on three sides supported by slender fluted cast iron columns, with segmental recesses at the rear of the galleries to illuminate the pews below. The flat plaster ceiling is adorned with geometric ribs and coats-of-arms. A baldacchino and font cover designed by J N Comper in 1930, as well as a tall 20th-century carved oak pulpit, are notable interior elements. The community hall, which adjoins the east wall, has a north gable doorway that is offset to the left, featuring an ashlar surround dated 1881 below a drip mould. It also has three-light mullioned windows, one to the left and another above at the gable centre on the first floor. Tall three-light side wall windows illuminate the interior, which is largely open beneath decorative hammer beam roof trusses.

Historically, the church was constructed in the style of St Paul's, Covent Garden, at a cost of £10,000 by the architect who restored that church.