St John the Baptist's Church, Chester

St John the Baptist's Church in Chester is a former cathedral of the Early Middle Ages, standing just outside the city walls on a cliff above the north bank of the River Dee. Reputedly founded by King Aethelred of Mercia in AD 689, it served as the seat of the Bishop of Lichfield from 1075 to 1095, and it is now considered the best example of eleventh- and twelfth-century church architecture in Cheshire — a Grade I listed building that the historian Alec Clifton-Taylor included in his list of "best" English parish churches, still active in the Diocese of Chester.

The church's early history glows with Anglo-Saxon royal pageantry. In 973, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, King Edgar of England came to Chester after his coronation at Bath and held court at a palace in the place now known as Edgar's Field, near the old Dee bridge at Handbridge. Taking the helm of a barge, he was rowed the short distance up the River Dee to St John the Baptist's Church by six tributary kings — the monk Henry Bradshaw says eight — in one of the most celebrated demonstrations of overlordship in English history, before a royal council was held. In the eleventh century Earl Leofric — husband of Lady Godiva — was a "great benefactor" of the church, and in 1075 Peter, Bishop of Lichfield, moved his see to Chester, making St John's his cathedral. His successor moved the seat to Coventry in 1095, after which St John's continued as a co-cathedral, with building on a grand scale through the end of the thirteenth century and a college of secular canons in residence. The church even hosted one of the most famous legal proceedings of the Middle Ages: on 3 September 1386, Owain Glyndŵr and others made their depositions here at the Court of Chivalry inquiry into the Scrope v. Grosvenor controversy — the great dispute over the right to bear the arms "azure, a bend or".

The church's later history is one of grandeur diminished and towers falling. The central tower collapsed in 1468. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the new Diocese of Chester of 1541 made the former Chester Abbey into Chester Cathedral, and St John's lost its ecclesiastical importance: much of its east end was demolished — parts remain as romantic ruins east of the present church, now a scheduled monument — and it became a parish church, its registers beginning in 1559. In 1581 the parishioners obtained a grant from Elizabeth I to restore the nave, but the north-west tower partially collapsed in 1572 and more catastrophically in 1574, destroying the western bays of the nave, which were rebuilt on a "magnificent scale". During the siege of Chester in 1645, with the Royalists holding the city for Charles I, the besieging Parliamentary forces garrisoned the church and used it as a gun platform to bombard the city and its walls. Victorian restorations by R. C. Hussey in 1859–66 and 1886–87 created the present church within the remains of the larger medieval building — though the north-west tower had one last fall in it: while under repair in 1881 it collapsed yet again, destroying the north porch, which John Douglas rebuilt in 1881–82; Douglas also added the north-east belfry tower in 1886. The ruined first stage of the north-west tower still stands at the west end. In 1925 the Warburton chapel at the south-east corner was extended to form the Lady Chapel.

Built of sandstone, the church comprises a four-bay nave with clerestory, north and south aisles and north porch, a crossing with single-bay transepts, a five-bay aisled chancel, and north and south chapels — the north, beneath the 1886 belfry tower, now a vestry, the south the Lady Chapel, with the Chapter House room beyond. While the exterior is largely Early English in character from the Victorian work, the interior is gloriously Norman: in the nave, the crossing, the first bay of the chancel, the arch to the Lady Chapel and the remains of the choir chapels — masonry that Richards judged the best of the Norman period in Cheshire, its massive drum piers and round arches among the most powerful Romanesque interiors in the north-west.

The contents span thirteen centuries. Fragments of late Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, thought to have stood originally in the churchyard, are preserved inside, along with many early effigies — all damaged, some of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century — and monuments to the Warburton family in the Lady Chapel. There are two fonts, one fifteenth-century and one from the Commonwealth period; two brass chandeliers of 1722; a nineteenth-century pulpit; nine memorial boards by members of the Randle Holme family; and a barely visible wall painting of St John the Baptist in the north aisle. The reredos of 1876, by John Douglas and made by Morris & Co., includes a painting of the Last Supper. The east window of 1863 was designed by T. M. Penson and made by Clayton and Bell, the west window by Edward Frampton (1887–90). The organ has a remarkable pedigree: built by William Hill and Company of London as a temporary organ for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, it was rebuilt for St John's, transported to Chester by barge, installed at the west end and opened on 28 October 1838 with a recital by Henry Gauntlett — chosen because he could actually play the pedals. Moved to the south transept in the 1859–66 restoration and to the north transept in 1895–96, when it received its present case by Thomas M. Lockwood (whose memorial is in the north aisle), it was converted to electro-pneumatic action by Charles Whiteley and Company in the 1960s and restored by Rod Billingsley in 2002 after vandalism.

Outside, a few tombstones remain in their original positions, though most gravestones have been laid flat to form the footpaths before the church — their inscriptions recorded by a research project in 2009 — and the nearby Anchorite's Cell, perched above the Dee, was originally associated with the church: legend claims King Harold survived Hastings and ended his days there as a hermit. St John the Baptist's remains an active Church of England parish church in the diocese, archdeaconry and deanery of Chester — the cathedral that Chester forgot, where eight kings once rowed an emperor of Britain to prayer.