Church of St John the Divine

Details

PRESTON

SD5429SW CHURCH STREET 941-1/12/81 (South side) 27/09/79 Church of St John the Divine

GV II*

Parish church. 1853-55, by E.H.Shellard; altered. Sandstone ashlar (now emphatically pointed), slate roofs. Nave with north and south aisles, west steeple with porch on north side, chancel with north organ-house and south chapel, and vestry attached to chapel. Decorated style, with reticulated tracery in 2-centred arched windows which have hoodmoulds with figured stops, and numerous crocketed pinnacles. The tall 3-stage tower has a moulded plinth and string course, set-back buttresses, a small 2-light west window, a cusped lancet to the 2nd stage and large diamond clock-faces on the north and south sides, a belfry stage with 2 windows in each side, all with stone louvres and crocketed gablets, a cornice with prominent gargoyles, and a parapet with corner pinnacles linked by short flying buttresses to smaller pinnacles clasping the spire; the tall octagonal spire has 2-light gableted lucarnes at the base and small lucarnes on 2 levels above. On the north side of the tower, an elaborate 2-storey gabled porch which has a doorway moulded in 2 orders under a hoodmould with large angel stops and a crocketed gablet containing mouchettes, flanked by crocketed niches, and at 1st floor a 2-light window flanked by cusped blind windows. The nave, of 5 bays plus a half-bay at the east end, has buttresses finished as pinnacles on the parapet, a pair of 2-light clerestory windows in each full bay and one in the half-bay, and octagonal pinnacles at the east end; the aisles have buttresses finished as gablets, and large 3-light windows with tracery in alternating patterns, and the western bay of the south aisle has a cusped doorway. The 3-bay chancel has diagonal buttresses at the east end finished with pinnacles, a large 5-light east window, a 3-light window on the north side, and a parapet with zig-zag open-work; attached in parallel on the north side of the chancel, a tall 2-bay organ house which has 3-light windows in the north side, a large 4-light east window, a similar parapet and corner pinnacles, and a steeply-pitched roof; and the 3-bay south chapel, coupled with the south side of the chancel, has buttresses, a 4-light east window, and 3-light windows in the south side mostly obscured by the parallel vestry (which has a doorway at the west end, a traceried 3-light window at the east end, and coupled lancets in the side). INTERIOR: five-and-a-half bay aisle arcades of quatrefoil piers with nobbly leaf capitals carrying 2-centred arches moulded in 2 orders, with hoodmoulds linked by figured stops, the arches of the half-bay dying into the chanel wall; chancel arch and 3-bay arcades in similar style, but with moulded annular caps to the columns and 3 orders of moulding to the arches, and a clerestory of 4+4 cusped lights to the organ house; hammer-beam roofs to both nave and chancel; gallery at west end of nave, carried on large timber girders with mouchette tracery, with cusped blind arcaded panelling to the front (formerly similar galleries in aisles removed in 1960s, leaving only the corbels on the piers). Monuments include a wall tablet to Dame Mary Hoghton (d.1719/20) in the chancel and 3 monumental slabs to other members of Hoghton family at the east end of nave (1719/20, 1768, 1772); in the chapel there is a large wall monument to the Rev.Roger Carus Wilson (d.1839) elaborately carved in Gothic style including reliefs of 5 Preston churches built during his incumbency; in the tower there is a Gothic tomb-recess to Thomas Starkie Shuttleworth (d.1819) and others to various civic dignitaries.

Listing NGR: SD5419729358

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

391960

Legacy System:

LBS

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