Church of St John

Details

LANCASTER

SD4761NE NORTH ROAD 1685-1/7/217 (North side) 22/12/53 Church of St John

GV II*

Church. Consecrated 1755, west tower by Thomas Harrison added 1784, south porch added 1873, alterations c1920, vested in Redundant Churches Fund 1983. Sandstone ashlar with slate roof. Comprises a nave with semicircular apse, a west tower, and a south porch. The nave is of 5 bays and has projecting quoins, and a cornice below a parapet with moulded coping. The tall windows have architraves and semicircular heads with keystones and impost blocks. On the north side the lower part of the west bay is occupied by a door architrave with cornice and pulvinated frieze; the window above, although with a higher sill, matches the other nave windows. The doorway is now blocked and contains a window. On the south side the east bay is similar, but has doors with raised and fielded panels. In the west bay is a single-storey porch in a matching style, with an architrave, and a pediment which rises above a cornice. Above is a round-headed window matching the others. The apse has 2 curved windows and is flanked by windows matching those of the side walls. The west wall contains similar windows on each side of the tower. The tower is of 3 stages. The lowest stage has lunette windows to north and south, with a rectangular window below on the north. On the west side are doors of raised and fielded panels in an architrave with pulvinated frieze and cornice. Above, a tablet records that the tower was built from a legacy of Thomas Bowes. The middle stage has clock faces on 3 sides the western one in a moulded recess. The upper stage, above a dentilled cornice, has rectangular louvred bell openings within aedicules which have Tuscan pilasters, and pediments rising from an upper cornice. The tower is capped by a rotunda with rectangular openings between engaged Tuscan columns carrying a curved entablature with triglyph frieze. Set back behind this is a drum decorated with swags, carrying a stone spirelet. INTERIOR: on 3 sides there are galleries with fronts of oak raised and fielded panels, carried on square panelled columns, with Ionic columns rising at gallery level to support plaster cornices, the ceiling between the cornices being curved upwards as a barrel-vault. The central part of the west gallery front breaks forwards with curved sides and is carried on 2 timber fluted Doric columns. Below the front of the west gallery a glazed screen has been added. The gallery is reached by 2 staircases with turned newels and ramped handrails. The east end of the church was re-ordered in the 1870s and again in the 1920s, when a north chapel and south vestry were created by removing the eastern bays of both galleries, leaving the fronts running through, and putting plaster walls pierced by lunettes within these bays at gallery level, and walls of timber and glass at the lower level. FITTINGS: the nave box pews are of oak and are arranged in 2 double rows. The 3rd and 4th pews from the front on the south side were the Corporation Pew and are arranged as one with a seat in the middle. The pews curve at the east end where the central aisle widens, originally to allow space for the pulpit, which was replaced by the present ironwork pulpit in 1875. The raised sanctuary area is also an alteration, but turned mahogany communion rails survive from the original scheme. The box pews were removed from the galleries during the C20, but the west organ survives in its original mahogany case. The original organ dated from 1785, but was rebuilt in 1868, replaced in 1898, and rebuilt in 1939 and 1992. Within the tower the architrave and cornice of the original west nave doorway can be seen. The clock mechanism, supplied by Bell and Atkinson of Lancaster and dated 1886, occupies a glass case in the middle stage. STAINED GLASS: the apse wall is painted with the Ten Commandments and the Creed, and its 2 windows contain glass of c1870 with roundels depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The north chapel contains 2 windows of c1895, probably by Shrigley and Hunt.

Listing NGR: SD4778461907

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

383247

Legacy System:

LBS

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