St John the Baptist, Cottered
St John the Baptist, Cottered
St John the Baptist is a Grade II* medieval parish church on Church Lane, Cottered, East Hertfordshire, in the Diocese of St Albans.
- Location
- Cottered, Hertfordshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Hertfordshire
- City / town
- Cottered
- Address
- Church Lane, Cottered, Hertfordshire, SG9 9QA
- Postcode
- SG9 9QA
- Built
- Mid C14; C15 nave windows and roof and north chapel; C16 north vestry; restored and re-seated 1886
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- John the Baptist
- Diocese
- St Albans
- Parish
- Cottered
- Grade
- II*
- Style
- Decorated and Perpendicular
- Materials
- Rubble with flint facings and clunch dressings; lead roofs to nave and spire; plain tiles to chancel and porch
- Grid reference
- TL 317 292
- Opening hours
- The church is open during daylight hours.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church. Level access to the main areas
Overview
Historic England dates the church to the mid-fourteenth century, possibly incorporating earlier fabric, with fifteenth-, sixteenth- and eighteenth-century alterations, restored and re-seated in 1886. RCHME assigns the chancel, nave, west tower and south porch to about 1350, the north chapel and the nave windows and roof to the fifteenth century, and the north vestry to the sixteenth. The tower is of three stages without buttresses, with an embattled parapet and a slender octagonal leaded spire. Walls are rubble with flint facings and clunch dressings, later repaired in limestone, brick and render.
A fifteenth-century wall painting of St Christopher, hidden after the Reformation, was uncovered in the 1886 repairs: the saint carries the Christ Child, guided by a hermit, against a local landscape. The west window is a Millennium glazing of the baptism of Christ. Sir James Cantlie (1851–1926), a founder of the London School of Tropical Medicine, is buried in the churchyard. The parish is Cottered.