St John, Shildon

St John’s is a Grade II Church of England parish church on Church Street, Shildon, County Durham, in the Diocese of Durham.

Overview

Historic England records a parish church of 1833–34 whose nave is by Anthony Salvin, largely rebuilt and extended in 1881–82 by C. Hodgson Fowler, who also rebuilt the west tower in 1891–1900. The fabric is dressed sandstone with Welsh slate roofs and a green slate tower roof. The plan has a disengaged west tower, a continuous aisled nave and chancel, and north and south porches at the west end, in Early English style with lancets under hoodmoulds.

The three-stage west tower has set-back buttresses, a roll-moulded pointed doorway on paired colonnettes, circular clock faces, a belfry of three louvred lancets, a corbelled parapet and a pyramidal roof; a datestone of 1900 is on the north return. The four-bay nave and two-bay chancel have buttressed aisles with paired lancets. The east end is triple-gabled, the projecting chancel lit by three stepped lancets. Inside, the listing describes a spacious plastered interior with a four-bay north arcade of chamfered pointed arches dying into octagonal piers, a similar six-bay south arcade, and a ceiled nave roof with braced tie beams. A monument to the locomotive engineer Timothy Hackworth stands north-west of the tower and is separately listed Grade II.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1121498
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St John, Shildon
• St John’s Shildon