History
The church was built in 1180 as a chapel of ease of the larger church of St. Mary, founded by the Benedictines of Tewkesbury Abbey. In 1404, it was severely damaged during the Welsh rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr. As a result, it was repaired and rebuilt in the early second half of the 15th century with the support of Ann Neville, wife of the Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III. At that time, among other things, a tower was built on the west side in the English Perpendicular Gothic style. Since the 17th century, following the dissolution of the Benedictine abbey, the building served as a parish church. In 1852, the windows in the nave were renewed. Between 1889 and 1891, significant extensions were made, when an additional external aisles and a sacristy were built.
Architecture
Church of St. John was built on the southeast side of the nearby castle, within the town walls, on a square near the northeast corner of the town (the opposite southern corner was occupied by the parish church of St. Mary). In the late 15th century, the church consisted of a five-bay, aisled nave, a chancel similar in width to the central nave, ended in the east by a straight wall and bordered on the north and south by rectangular, two-bay chapels. Also a quadrangular tower was located on the west side of the central nave.
The tower was reinforced with corner, multi-stepped buttresses. On the northeast side, a buttress was replaced by a projecting polygonal turret, housing a spiral staircase. The tower’s ground floor opened to all cardinal directions, creating a vaulted porch, accessible from the north and south through moulded portals with ogee arches, and from the west through a stepped, moulded pointed portal, decorated with alternating shafts, concaves, and tooth friezes. The tower’s floors were separated by two string courses, between which windows were placed. The first floor had only one western window, but it was the largest in size and featured five-light tracery. Higher up, on the top two floors on each cardinal direction, were narrower two-light windows with tracery featuring motifs of trefoils, cinquefoils, ogee and pointed arches.
The most distinctive feature of the tower of St. John’s church from the late 15th century, was the openwork parapet crowning the walls, with symbolic and decorative battlements and tracery, modeled on late Gothic churches from Gloucestershire and Somerset, and especially Bristol and the surrounding area. Furthermore, at each corner and in the center of the tower walls, on the crowning cornice were carved corbels resembling mascarons, above which were erected slender pinnacles, the corner ones being connected to the adjacent openwork turrets. Subsequent, lower pinnacles formed crowns around the pyramidal spires of the turrets, the highest of which topped the northeastern turret, which extended the staircase.
Inside the church, the nave was divided into aisles by trapezoidal piers, framed by four wide recesses between narrow grooves, and four corner shafts, each bearing small, polygonal capital. Above the capitals, the shafts were extended onto pointed arcades, moulded in the same manner as the pillars. The chancel arcade separating the nave from the chancel took on a similar form, but was made wider and much higher. A timber rood screen was placed in front of the chancel arcade, the upper floor of which was accessible by a spiral staircase in the corner of the southern aisle.
Current state
The present church, unfortunately, was significantly enlarged in the early modern period, which made its late medieval shape partially blurred. What stands out is the tower, which since the 15th century has been one of the most characteristic places in the city, and at the same time an outstanding example of Parpendicular Gothic in Wales. Apart from it, the only medieval elements visible from the outside are the western bay of the northern aisle, the eastern and part of the northern wall of the chancel, and the northern chapel at the presbytery. The original south chapel has not survived, only two arcades leading to the early modern chapel have remained.
bibliography:
Newman J., The buildings of Wales, Glamorgan, London 1995.
Salter M., Abbeys, priories and cathedrals of Wales, Malvern 2012.
Salter M., The old parish churches of Gwent, Glamorgan & Gower, Malvern 2002.
Wooding J., Yates N., A Guide to the churches and chapels of Wales, Cardiff 2011.