Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

Church, built in 1843 by John Brown, surveyor of Norwich Cathedral. The building is constructed in ashlar with slate roofs and is designed in the Early English style.

The church comprises a nave of six bays without aisles, a narrow three-bay chancel, and a hexagonal vestry to the north-east. The architectural detailing is consistent throughout: buttresses are set-back, off-set and gabled; the base has plinths and at cill level there is a corbel table and casement moulding to a string course below the parapet, which has pitched coping. Lancet windows have pointed arches in chamfered stepped architraves under hoodmoulds with ornamental stops.

The east end is gabled with a cross as finial over a three-light window with narrow casement moulding to the outer edge and engaged colonettes with round caps; the central light is stilted. To the north of the chancel stands a hexagonal vestry with a pyramidal roof, featuring similar but smaller details to the main church. The north-east door is planked with elaborate strap hinges.

The tower to the west is built in four stages. According to Pevsner, it was built to support a spire. Massive set-back buttresses occupy much of the wall space. The base is plain, with a single-light window above the cill plinth. Above this, a pointed-arched corbel table under a string course marks the base of the third stage, which features a colonnade of seven engaged colonettes. Paired belfry arches on all sides have cinquefoil heads, with two colonettes to each side and three to the centres. Above them another corbel table supports octagonal spirelets to the corners, each with pyramidal roofs and colonettes to an encircling arcade. The west door between the buttresses consists of double doors with one mock ornamental strap hinge; the pointed arch over it has three colonettes and casement moulding containing one row of dog-tooth moulding. The single-storey south porch is tall, reaching to the corbel table of the main block; it is gabled like the east end, with a wide door with ornamental hinges and a smaller door cut into it.

Interior features include two trusses of hammer-beam roof in the chancel with angel stops, two carrying crosses and two carrying crowns. The chamfered rafters and boarding behind are painted. The stained glass east window with three lights is by Douglas Forsyth, dated 1916. Below this is a painted and gilded reredos with seven gables featuring trefoils over pointed arches supported by engaged colonettes with gilded foliate capitals. The sedilia to the right is of similar design, painted white. High up to the left is a similar frame containing three memorial plaques.

The floor is richly patterned with polychromatic tiles, with three full-width stone steps up to the choir and two black marble steps to the altar. The organ is corbelled out to the front left of the chancel, with a window to its right featuring small pierced tracery and a pointed-arched door below.

The five-bay nave has a dark-stained hammer-beam roof supported on large polygonal corbels. The windows contain original richly-coloured geometric-patterned stained glass in chamfered architraves with hoodmoulds featuring foliate stops and round capitals to engaged colonettes. The full-height south porch has painted chamfered rafters under a painted planked ceiling.

Over the west door leading to the base of the tower is a double hoodmould, both with foliate stops, over a shallow pointed arch; the planked door has elaborately scrolled hinges. The hexagonal pulpit to the left has pointed arches to each facet with foliate stops to hoodmoulds over trefoil-headed recesses; the corners have concave moulding with bosses to the base. The pulpit was painted and gilded in 1954. The octagonal font to the front right of the nave is supported on eight short columns beneath a wreath of gilded leaves, corbelled out to a trefoil-arcaded top; the cover is a plain oak shallow cone. The upper part of the west end of the nave contains a church room enclosed within it, added in 1991.

This church is an early example of Brown's more ecclesiologically correct work and was built in a poor and rapidly expanding area of the town at a cost of approximately £10,000 under the patronage of Reverend J M Capes. The new parish of St John the Baptist was created in 1846. It is an early and competent example of a church embodying the principles of the Oxford Movement, complete with much of its original stained glass.