St John the Baptist's Church, Bollington

St John the Baptist’s stands on Church Street in Bollington, a small town in Cheshire. It is a redundant Anglican church built in the 1830s from local sandstone with slate roofs. The building has a five-bay nave, a short chancel, and a four-stage west tower topped with an embattled parapet. Inside, galleries on three sides rest on thin iron columns, and the chancel is little more than a shallow recess without an arch. The church was designed by William Hayley and Thomas Brown and partly funded by a grant of £3,475 from the Church Building Commission. The church is worth visiting for its clear example of early 19th-century Commissioners’ church architecture. Its total cost was £4,002, a large sum for the time, and it once served a growing industrial community. Though declared redundant in 2006, the building retains notable fittings such as an 1836 organ by Samuel Renn, later enlarged and rebuilt by Nicholson and Lord, Jardine, and others. The peal of eight bells was removed and rehung at another church, where two new bells were added and first rung in 2017. Visitors find an uncluttered interior with galleries on three sides and Y-tracery windows in each nave bay. The tower shows clock faces in its third stage and louvred bell openings above. The churchyard holds war graves of fifteen Commonwealth service personnel from the two world wars. The exterior’s hammer-dressed stone and embattled parapets give the building a sturdy, simple character set against Bollington’s quiet streets.