St John's Church, Warminster

St John’s Church stands in the Boreham area on the south-east edge of Warminster in Wiltshire. It was built in 1865 to ease pressure on the nearby parish church of St Denys and occupies a field called Picked Acre beside Boreham Road. The land was donated by William Temple of Bishopstrow House in 1859. Within a year the vicar, the Rev J. E. Phillips, raised £2,700 through a building fund. The total cost of the church came to £1,935, leaving a small surplus. George Edmund Street, a London architect, designed the church in the Early English style. The exterior appears plain, but the interior surprises visitors with rich decoration. Before 1868 craftsmen installed patterned tiles, a carved reredos with a gabled Crucifixion scene, a font, a pulpit, oak choir stalls and free-standing nave benches. Clayton and Bell created the stained glass in the chancel. A single bell hangs in the small bellcote above the east end of the nave. Later work added further colour and detail. Between 1911 and 1915 Charles Ponting designed mosaics and opus sectile murals of scriptural scenes, painted by James Powell and Sons. These vivid early-20th-century images include mosaics of the four archangels behind the reredos. Ponting also added a western baptistery between 1925 and 1926. The church’s artistic importance was recognised in 1978 when it became a Grade II* listed building.