Church Of St John The Baptist

The Church of St John the Baptist is a parish church with a 13th-century tower, located in Oake. The chancel was rebuilt in 1841, and a vestry was added between 1869 and 1870. The church underwent significant restoration and refenestration in the mid-19th century, with work carried out by Edward Ashworth. The building is constructed of red sandstone random rubble and features slate roofs, decorative ridge tiles, and coped verges, although the verges are only present on the porch.

The church has a west tower, a two-bay nave, a southeast chapel that now serves as an organ chamber adjoining the south porch, a chancel, and a vestry. The three-stage tower has a parapet and was originally gabled, with diagonal buttresses, string courses, a chamfered plinth, and two-light trefoil-headed louvred bell-openings. There is also a rectangular louvred opening on the south front and a three-light lancet window in the south wall of the nave. The single-storey gabled porch features kneelers, a moulded pointed arch opening, a pointed moulded inner doorway, a 19th-century door, and a 19th-century wagon roof. The nave roof continues as a catslide over the one-bay chapel to the right, which has a two-light window. The chancel includes a three-light trefoil-headed mullioned window to the left of the priest's door and a lancet window to the right, along with a three-light east window. The single-storey vestry is located to the north and has a two-light window on the north wall of the chancel, with two additional windows on the north wall of the nave.

Inside, the church is rendered except for the random rubble west wall. The tower arch is chamfered in two orders, dying into inposts, while the chancel arch is wood corbelled out with a depressed moulded Tudor arch leading to the chapel. The nave and chancel have 19th-century ribbed barrel vaulted roofs, and the chapel features chamfered lateral beams. The pulpit is composed of bench ends that were reset when the church was reseated in the mid-19th century. A 16th-century painted wall tablet depicting kneeling figures commemorates the Hadley family in the chancel, and there is a coloured tile dado in the sanctuary, dating from 1869 along with the other fittings.