Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

A High-Victorian Gothic parish church based on the Decorated style, built as a complete architectural and decorative scheme. It comprises a nave with lower chancel, north transept, and a south transept tower.

The exterior is constructed of snecked freestone with moulded sill bands, and banded tile roofs with ridge cresting set behind coped gables on overhanging eaves. The four-bay nave contains a porch in the west bay and a tower in the east bay, which balances the north transept. The porch has a pointed arch entrance with half-round columns to the inner order, hood mould and unmoulded (or unfinished) stops. The boarded door to the nave has false strap hinges and a pointed arch with hood mould. Two three-light south windows in the nave have reticulated tracery.

The chancel features a south chapel under an outshut roof on the east side of the tower, with two cusped south windows and a three-light east window. The chancel itself has a two-light south window, and in its east wall are set-back buttresses and a five-light window. The north window is two-light Perpendicular. Balancing the south chapel is an outshut former north vestry, now housing the organ, with a freestone stack. It has a two-light east window under a blank tympanum with sexfoil, and stone steps to a basement boiler room. The north side has two square-headed windows and a boarded door with strap hinges under an ogee head. The north transept contains a four-light north window with geometrical tracery. The nave has three two-light north windows with Decorated tracery. In the west wall are set-back buttresses and a five-light window with intersecting tracery. To its right and on the west side of the porch is a gabled projection added in 2001.

The three-stage tower is square in the lower stage with angle buttresses and a tall two-light south window. The narrower middle stage is octagonal and contains a clock in the south face and a narrow light in the east face. The upper stage has tall cusped bell openings with louvres in the main directions, a sill band, and is topped by a steep pyramidal roof with an apex weathervane.

The interior presents a complete decorative scheme. It is faced in snecked dressed stone with a sill band in the nave, and windows have rere arches. The nave has a four-bay crown-post roof with ovolo-moulded tie beams and octagonal posts, with closely-spaced rafters. The pointed chancel arch has an inner order on corbels, and across it sits a freestone screen base with a blind quatrefoil frieze. The north transept has a pointed arch with two orders of chamfer and a Gothic vestry screen dated 1966. A similar arch on the south side leads to the tower base, which has squinches beneath the second stage and pointed east doors to the south chapel.

The chancel has a three-bay arched-brace roof with cusped windbraces on a moulded, castellated cornice. On the south and north sides of the chancel are arches dying into the imposts. The south side, towards the chapel, has a wooden screen with a pointed doorway and three bays with panelled dado and open cusped arches. On the north side is a narrower arch with a pointed doorway to its right, originally the vestry but now housing the organ, with a three-bay screen similar to the south side. The chancel features a cusped piscina and double sedilia under cusped arches with a central colonnette and trefoiled roundel in the spandrel. A five-bay Caen stone reredos has attached pinnacles with foliage spandrels, narrow arches with two-light blind tracery, and a wider square-headed central bay with a crucifix against a diaper background, all beneath a foliage and castellated cornice. The reredos is flanked by glazed and embossed Minton tiles of quatrefoil patterns with foliage. The chancel floor has decorative and encaustic tiles.

The octagonal font has a finely moulded base and stem, with a cover strengthened by ironwork foliage. Simple pews have shaped ends. The freestone round pulpit has a moulded pedestal and open cusped arches below a moulded cornice. Choir stalls have blind cusped arches to the seat backs on the front tier. The communion rail has iron uprights with scroll enrichment and a moulded wooden rail.

The east and west windows are by Clayton and Bell. The east window depicts the Ascension and scenes in the Life of Christ. The west window depicts the life and death of John the Baptist. In the north wall of the nave is a memorial tablet to Lord and Lady Hanmer (died 1881 and 1880), founders of the church, which has a scrolled pediment crowned by a harp representing eternal life.