Church of St John the Baptist

St John the Baptist is the parish church of White Ladies Aston in Worcestershire, a Grade II* listed building of Norman origin set in a secluded churchyard reached by a yew-lined path. A modest country church with a wooden spire as old as the Mary Rose, it carries a surprising tangle of history — Cistercian nuns, Civil War ejections, a long-serving clerical dynasty and a famous connection to the invention of Worcestershire sauce.

The church dates from 1204, when Robert de Everay gave two palfreys to the Bishop of Worcester and so won the right to present a vicar to the parish of Aston Episcopi, intending to build a stone church there. That stone church still stands, with its Norman doorway and a font probably of the thirteenth century. In 1255 the parish was renamed White Ladies Aston after its link with Whistones Priory and its Cistercian nuns — the "White Ladies" — who were endowed with land and tithes here; Bishop Giffard made a further grant of the chapel's tithes in 1283, and the connection lasted until the priory was dissolved in 1536. The oldest timbers in the tower and spire date from the fifteenth century, and a new bell was bought in 1410, while the main timbers of the elegant splay-footed spire are around 1545 — the very age of the warship Mary Rose.

The seventeenth century brought the turbulence of the Civil War even to this quiet village. In 1652 the curate John Moseley was ejected over anti-Quaker sermons; in 1656 a Fifth Monarchy Man, Robert Brown, caused trouble in the congregation; and in 1661 a curate was ejected for pro-Commonwealth preaching at the Restoration of Charles II. By 1848 the church had fallen into poor condition, the antiquarian John Noake noting its broken glass and pews so high that they shut out "the World entire."

Its restoration is bound up with one of the great names of Worcester. The Reverend Henry Martyn Sherwood — son of the children's writer Mary Martha Sherwood and of Captain Henry Sherwood of the 53rd Foot — served as vicar from 1839 to 1910, the second longest-serving incumbent in the Church of England, and threw himself into improving the village, its school, its roads and its church. The extensive rebuilding of 1861 added a new north aisle and vestry, overhauled the stonework and increased the seating from 73 to 155, and an avenue of twenty-two yew trees, one for each year of Sherwood's incumbency to that point, was planted along the approach. Much of the cost was met by Mr Perrins of Worcester, in payment of a family debt of gratitude: his grandfather's chemist's shop had made up an Indian sauce from a recipe brought home in 1812, and it was Captain Sherwood, on leave from India, who bought a bottle and suggested that Perrins produce it commercially. He did so in partnership with Mr Lea, and the firm of Lea & Perrins prospered so well — its product the celebrated Worcestershire sauce, now known worldwide — that the Perrins family promised a reward to the Reverend Sherwood, annually renewed and, it is said, repeatedly declined.

Built of uncoursed lias rubble with Cotswold dressings, the church is entered through a timber porch of 1864 leading to its Norman south doorway. Inside, the walls are rendered and painted pale cream, giving a light and welcoming feel, with a three-bay arcade of flatly pointed arches in alternating light and dark stone, well-moulded octagonal capitals, and trefoil mouldings between the arches, one dated 1861. The western wooden tower is carried on massive timbers, and the chancel keeps narrow round-arched Norman windows alongside restored Perpendicular ones. The twelve-sided font, of uncertain but probably medieval date, bears damage where hasps once allowed it to be locked, and the wooden pulpit retains nearby the book-rest from its former three-decker predecessor.

The church's memorials record a village that played its part in the wider world. Tablets commemorate the Elrington family of Low Hill House — Captain Thomas Elrington, who served sixty-five years in the army from the Jacobite Rising of 1745 to the Seven Years' War, and his descendants who fought across the growing Empire, one of them present at Napoleon's death on St Helena. A plaque in the north aisle names the villagers who fell in the Great War, among them Corporal David Gould, an agricultural worker killed on the Somme in 1916, and Second Lieutenant Hamilton Stanley Sherwood, grandson of the long-serving vicar, killed near Béthune in 1918. Joined with Churchill in a united benefice in 1924, and with its wooden spire repaired in 1985, St John the Baptist endures as a richly storied little church beneath the Worcestershire sky.