Lych Gate, St John's Episcopal Church, Pleasance, Jedburgh

St John's Episcopal Church, Pleasance, Jedburgh

The church was designed by John Hayward in 1843, with much of the interior detailing almost certainly by William Butterfield. It is a Decorated English Gothic church comprising a 4-bay aisleless nave and 2-bay chancel. An entrance porch with organ chamber and choir loft stands to the south, with a sacristy to the north. A Lothian family vault lies beneath the chancel, and a bellcote sits at the west end.

The main structure is built in dressed and snecked cream sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. Two-stage angle buttresses and identical buttresses to all piers articulate the walls, with cill courses and a base course running throughout. Plate traceried windows light all bays on the north and south elevations, while curvilinear tracery appears in the east and west windows. All openings have hoodmoulds with male and female heads as label stops. The doors are boarded with wrought-iron hinges.

The south elevation features a projecting gabled two-stage porch to the inner left bay, with a heavily moulded and chamfered doorframe containing a single pair of nookshafts. A plainer internal doorframe leads to the nave, above which a string course and single light window sit beneath a gablet cresting. A single bay lies to the west with two bays to the east. An octagonal stairtower occupies the re-entrant angle to the east, its piend-roof terminating at the nave eaves. The two-bay chancel to the far right is lower and slightly recessed, with single light windows. Within the porch, a door in a shouldered surround to the right provides access to the choir loft.

The west elevation shows a gable end with a 3-light traceried window. An ashlar gabled bellcote sits at the gablehead with a bell suspended in a pointed arch opening.

The north elevation comprises four bays of the nave to the west, a projecting gabled sacristy with a stop-chamfered framed door approached by four ashlar steps, and an octagonal ashlar apex stack. A rectangular bipartite window lights the west return wall, with a pair of similar single windows to the east return. The west return is flanked by steps to the crypt below. A single chancel window to the east has steps leading down to the Lothian crypt below, sheltered by an open timber canopy with slated pitched roof.

The east elevation displays a 3-light traceried chancel window with a Greek cross finial at the gablehead.

Leaded windows throughout contain stained or grisaille glass. The roof features sawtooth skews and gablet skewputts, grey-green slates, and a gable at the east end of the nave crowned with a cross finial. Lead flashing runs along the ridge. Moulded eaves are punctuated by gargoyle rainwater spouts, while a flagged surround at ground level includes an incised drainage channel.

The interior contains a decorative tiled pavement and carved panelled Gothic dado at the west end of the nave. A Caen stone pulpit, corbelled from the north-east corner of the nave, has a panelled door in a chamfered ogee-arched stone surround opening directly from the sacristy. Carved oak pews fill the nave, and the organ chamber and choir loft above the porch are now closed off, serving as a choristers' vestry with access from the porch. An open timber roof spans the nave, which appears once to have been stencilled. The walls are rendered. A heavily moulded chancel arch frames an elaborate carved oak screen and rood. The chancel is fitted with luxurious high church furnishings, including lavish Minton tiles to the floor and walls, a carved stone tripartite sedilia in the south wall with a piscina to the east, and a Caen stone altar with quatrefoil panels. An organ occupies an arch in the north wall connecting to the sacristy. The chancel ceiling is richly stencilled in a waggon design, with choir stalls introduced at a later date.

The lych gate was designed by William Butterfield in 1844. It features thin curved oak braces supporting a slightly bellcast pitched roof covered in terracotta tiles.

Boundary walls of stepped rubble with moulded ashlar coping enclose the site.