Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This is a parish church, mostly dating from the 19th century but incorporating 15th and 18th-century fragments. It was rebuilt in 1885-87 by the architect Willcox of Bath. The building is constructed from local stone cut and squared with Ham stone ashlar dressings, and has plain clay tile roofs between coped gables with finials.

The church follows a four-cell plan comprising a three-bay chancel, five-bay nave with south aisle, and a south-east vestry with organ chamber. It also has a north porch and a west tower. The design is mostly in Early English style.

The chancel features a plinth and cill course with gabletted corner buttresses. Its east wall has a four-light window with 19th-century tracery under a pointed arch with label. The north wall has simple lancet windows. On the south side, the vestry with organ chamber has single-light windows and an ornamental chimney on its east wall. The south wall of the chancel carries a four-light window with reticulated tracery under a flat head, and a cambered-arched doorway set at an angle against the south aisle. The south aisle is marked by a plinth, offset buttresses between bays, and a plain parapet with pinnacles. A two-light 19th-century traceried window is also present.

The nave's north wall has offset corner buttresses only and incorporates part of an earlier church wall. It features tall two-light 19th-century traceried windows. The north porch has diagonal corner buttresses with offsets and pinnacles, and a simple moulded arch.

The west tower is of several dates. Its base dates from the 16th century, with 15th-century work above, and an extra stage was added in 1738. It has diagonal corner buttresses with offsets for half their height, a string course dividing the two stages, and a battlemented parapet over a second string course with corner pinnacles. A small stair turret with an angled door occupies the north-west corner. The tower is crowned with a small wooden turret with a lead roof and a weathervane. The lower storeys are plain on the north and south sides. The west face includes a blocked 18th-century doorway beneath a 15th-century traceried window without label. This window was removed from a house in Stowell, Charlton Horethorne, in 1709 and incorporated here in 1886. Above it is an 18th-century near-oval window with architrave. The second stage has semi-circular arched windows on all faces, each with architrave, impost blocks and keystones, fitted with wooden baffles. An east-facing clockface, intended for the use of travellers on the now-defunct north-south road through the village, is mounted on this stage.

The interior is High Victorian in character, featuring barrel-vault openwork timber roofs, unplastered walls, and patterned clay tile floors. A carved wooden and painted reredos by George Kruger Gray was added in 1920. The nave and chancel arches are nicely detailed. The tower arch is filled by an Art Nouveau screen made by villagers of North Curry in 1902.

Notable fittings include an octagonal font of around 1400 with double quatrefoil panels under the rim, a shaped bowl with angels at each angle, a panelled shaft, and a less delicate base. The east windows were made by Kempe in 1886. A wrought chancel screen and openwork pulpit date from 1887. A hatchment board for the Dodington family, who occupied Horsington House from 1790 to 1922, is positioned in the undertower space. Several 18th-century monuments in the nave commemorate members of the Dodington and Wickham families. The Wickham family served as Rectors from 1686 to 1897. The first recorded Rector dates to 1305, though the church is first mentioned in a tax record of 1272.

Apart from the heightening of the tower in 1738, the church was substantially rebuilt in 1818-19 and again in 1885-87.