St John the Baptist, Mildenhall

St John the Baptist on Church Lane, Mildenhall, Wiltshire, is a Grade I parish church in the Diocese of Salisbury, known for a near-complete set of 1816 oak fittings that John Betjeman compared to a Jane Austen novel.

Overview

Historic England lists a church of about the tenth century and about 1200, refitted in 1816 and restored in 1876, of rendered flint with limestone ashlar and lead roofs. The plan is nave and aisles, chancel, west tower and south porch. The three-stage tower has a ninth- or tenth-century lowest stage with angle and clasped west buttresses, Anglo-Saxon two-light openings on north and south, and a crenellated third stage with pierced transennae. The nave has three-bay arcades of unchamfered round arches on scalloped capitals, one carved with Adam and Eve. The chancel has a depressed panelled plaster ceiling.

The 1816 fittings, paid for by rector Charles Francis and twelve others, include box pews, a carved leaf frieze, a high reader's desk and lectern, Gothic choir pews, a baldacchino on quatrefoil riddel posts, and a west gallery of 1821. Wiltshire Community History notes that later Victorian restorers left this Georgian woodwork in place. Fragments of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century glass survive in the east window. The church is open daily.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1365445
• Wiltshire Community History: Church of St John the Baptist
• Marlborough Anglican Team