Church of St John the Baptist, Leytonstone

The Church of St John the Baptist, Leytonstone, is a nineteenth-century Church of England parish church occupying a prominent position on the High Road in Leytonstone, East London. A Grade II listed building of yellow brick in the Early English Gothic style, it is the historic parish church of the district — and a building with a remarkable connection to the great explorer David Livingstone, whose journals were edited within its former vicarage.

Leytonstone was once part of the ancient parish of Leyton, whose only Anglican church lay inconveniently far off. As early as 1748 wealthy residents proposed building a chapel of ease in the then-rural but prosperous village, one complaining that the inhabitants found it "very inconvenient, and many utterly impossible" to travel to Leyton for worship. Despite the opposition of the lord of the manor, a chapel was built and opened in 1749, funded by residents including the poet David Lewis and the banker Samuel Bosanquet. Legal disputes closed it almost at once, until a minister was appointed in 1754, and it was enlarged in 1819 to seat 580, with many free seats for those unable to pay pew rents. Because it stood on leasehold land it could never be consecrated, and after it became redundant it served as schoolrooms and assembly rooms before being demolished in 1938.

By 1830 the old chapel was decaying and inadequate, and a committee was formed to raise money for a proper new church. The architect Edward Blore was engaged to draw up plans, and a large plot further north on the High Road was purchased at the expense of William Cotton of Wallwood House, a successful merchant. The first stone was laid in July 1832, and the new church — built of yellow brick with stone dressings in the Early English style, with a nave, small sanctuary and a pinnacled three-stage west tower seating about 600 — was consecrated on 31 October 1833 by Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London. A ring of bells cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was given by William Davis, each named after a female member of the Davis and Cotton families. A separate ecclesiastical parish for the church was created in 1845.

The church's most extraordinary chapter belongs to its third vicar, Horace Waller, appointed in 1870, a prominent abolitionist and friend of several missionaries to Africa, including David Livingstone. After Livingstone's death in Africa in 1873, his two devoted African companions, Abdullah Susi and James Chuma — who had carried his body to the coast — travelled to England, where Waller invited them to stay at the Leytonstone vicarage. There they helped him edit and annotate Livingstone's last journals, published late in 1874. In the vicarage garden, Susi and Chuma even built a replica of the African hut in which Livingstone had died, a photograph of which survives at the School of Oriental and African Studies — a poignant memorial to the explorer in suburban East London.

The coming of the railway to Leytonstone in 1856 transformed the district, as great estates gave way to streets of terraced houses and the population grew rapidly. A number of daughter churches were established to serve the new suburbs, and St John's itself was enlarged in 1893 by the firm of Adams and Mann, who added a chancel and choir vestry and 140 new seats, together with a new organ by Brindley and Foster that replaced an old barrel organ — the latter operated by a local gardener said to crank it faster than the congregation could sing. A stone pulpit, originally designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield for a church in Belgravia, was installed at the same time. Further additions followed in the early twentieth century, including a south aisle by the distinguished church architect W. D. Caröe, later extended into a side chapel by the firm of C. E. Kempe.

Today St John's remains an active and lively parish church, listed at Grade II and well known in its community for events that make full use of its churchyard and tower — a regular market, outdoor screenings of films by the Leytonstone-born director Alfred Hitchcock, a repair café, and tower tours offering views across London to the Shard and Canary Wharf. Its bells still ring, in a tradition that once included William Pye, described in his day as "the greatest ringer of his time".

From its origins as a humble chapel of ease, through its building by Edward Blore and its place in the story of David Livingstone, to its busy life today, the Church of St John the Baptist, Leytonstone, remains a much-loved landmark at the heart of its East London community.