St John's Church

St John's Church

This is a cruciform church in the restrained Perpendicular style, constructed from snecked, rough-dressed slate-stone blocks with red sandstone dressings and banding. The roofs are of medium pitch in slate, with coped and finialed gable parapets.

The nave features a clerestory with 4-light Tudor-arched tracery windows, each with continuous moulded labels and string courses. Shallow stepped buttresses on the exterior express the internal bay divisions. The single-storey nave aisles have paired 2-light cusped windows with exposed rafter ends to slightly oversailing eaves; the south aisle has a battered base.

The west front is dominated by a complex 5-light window in Reticulated Decorated style, with label and cill mouldings. Plain stepped buttresses flank this window. To the north and south of the west front, set back, are single-storey gabled porches with blind heraldic tracery panels to their west parapets. The porches have stepped access to their west entrances, with continuously-moulded Gothic arches and returned ogee labels terminating in foliate finials. The south porch gable contains a canopied niche carried on a naturalistic foliate corbel, sheltering a figure of St John the Baptist. The inscription beneath reads: "I am the way, the truth and the life." Flanking single-light cusped windows with plain labels sit beneath this niche.

A large crossing tower dominates the composition, with stepped angle buttresses and a crenellated parapet. The buttresses terminate in crocketed blind tracery finials. The tower is crowned by a squat, pyramidal lead roof with decorative weathervane. A semi-octagonal stone-roofed stair turret sits at the south-east corner, with a parapeted stepped access leading to an ogee-headed entrance with plain boarded door. The stair turret has two 2-light tracery windows on each upper face, with two small round-arched lights beneath.

The south transept displays a sculptured angel finial to its gable and a complex tracery window with segmental head and returned label. Beneath this are two single-light ogee windows with depressed-arched heads, and a further simplified similar window at basement level, with a segmental-arched entrance and recessed boarded door. Small ogee lights light the east return walls of the transepts. The chancel contains a large 7-light east window with flanking stepped buttresses. Paired 2-light pointed tracery windows to the chancel north and south walls have returned labels and a shared central foliate stop.

The interior contains a 5-bay pointed-arched nave arcade with heavily-moulded labels stopped with carved angel figures. The arcade piers are octagonal with moulded capitals and simple bases. The roof is particularly fanciful, featuring crenellated tie beams, arched braces and two tiers of gently-cusped windbraces carried on corbelled wall posts. The aisle roofs are similar but plainer.

The nave floor is laid in parquet and retains original oak pews with blind tracery panels to their bench-ends. A vestment press towards the west end displays fine Perpendicular style figurative and tracery carving. The marble font, by Davidson and Co of Inverness (1894, after designs by Thorwaldsen of Stockholm), is sculptured with a life-size angel holding a shell and is fitted with a brass rail supported on decorative iron balusters. Above this on the west wall is a sandstone relief plaque bearing the names of the Bishops of Bangor, featuring a central cross with Perpendicular tracery and foliate forms. An octagonal wooden font with blind tracery sits on a corbelled stone base.

The west window contains good stained glass by C.E. Kempe. An entrance to the south transept is positioned at the east end of the south nave aisle, formed by a simply-moulded round arch with a blind pointed arch above and a carved angel in the spandrel. The door itself is deeply recessed with wrought iron hinges.

A large pointed crossing arch, stepped and with moulded jambs carried on foliate corbels, leads to the crossing, which features decorative 13th-century style tiles. The space is occupied by Perpendicular style choirstalls with trefoil bench-ends and blind and open tracery. The south crossing arch is entirely occupied by a large Perpendicular panelled organ.

The north transept functions as a Lady chapel, entered from the north aisle via a wide pointed arch. Two plain pointed-arched openings to the crossing feature decorative wrought iron screens. The single-bay chancel contains a simple piscina on the north wall and a two-seat sedilia on the south wall with arched labels to ogee heads and foliate finials. A wooden waggon roof with three tiers of tracery panels covers the chancel, which also features a decorative tiled pavement matching that of the crossing. A large reredos occupies the east wall, with a central Crucifixion Group and flanking saints all in complex canopied niches with angel finials and a blind tracery dado. Good figurative glass, as found elsewhere, fills the chancel and north transept windows.