At the east end of the south aisle, you’ll see a timber partition with organ pipes above it. This is the organ screen, and it hides one of the biggest church organs in the county. The original organ was built by John Nicholson in 1859 but it has been added to over the years. It originally sat the other side of the church but was moved in the 1950s and now occupies a room of its own! The open screen over the top was carved by Robert Panchieri in 1969, one of several pieces by Panchieri and his father Celestino Panchieri in this and other local churches. This spot was originally a Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. We know it had an altar because the mediaeval piscina is still in place. A piscina – literally a fish pool! – is a little stone basin in an arched recess, used to wash up the communion cup and plate. You can see it just to the right of the wooden screen.Now let’s take a look at the chancel.
This is a church in miniature. It even has a mini flat roof, like the nave. Mediaeval porches weren’t just for getting out of the rain. The first part of the medieval marriage and baptism services were held here, before entering the church. Some porches were also used as school rooms, although we don’t know if that was the case here. Oddly, this porch doesn’t have the stone benches along each side that nearly all medieval porches have. Perhaps they were taken out at some time, but some original features do remain. The niche on the left has lost its statue, but the holy water stoop on the left is still in place, its bowl worn down by centuries of use. Later in time, the Victorian metal gates were meant to replace the solid doors during summer months – but can you imagine having to lift those heavy doors off their hinges each year! The fine stained glass window by E.A.Lemmon commemorates Douglas Berwick, the founder of Bromsgrove’s “Evergreens” scout troop in 1930. Lastly, look above the door into the church. Can you see the line of an old roof? That’s the roofline of the original timber porch, before it was replaced in the 15th century. Now let’s go back into the church.
In medieval times, everybody went to church. In fact, you had to, and you were fined if you didn’t! So, as Bromsgrove grew in size, more and more people had to be fitted into the church. The easiest way of making the church bigger was to widen it by adding aisles. St John’s probably had narrow aisles from early times, but its original narrow south aisle was almost doubled in width in the late 15th century, when the south arcade was rebuilt. There’s something else different about this aisle as well. Look at the windows. Most of the other windows in the church have pointed tops. The south aisle windows are flat-topped, like modern windows. This shows how late in the medieval period this aisle was rebuilt. Like the nave roofs, flat was now fashionable. It allowed more light to pour in, and the fact that it used more glass again showed that the town could afford it -the show-offs!The large wall monument in the south aisle commemorates George Lyttelton, who died in 1600. Lyttelton was a prominent lawyer in Elizabethan England and married into the Talbot family, who we’ll meet later. Take a moment to look at his tomb, and especially the carvings around the inscription. The Elizabethan church was dominated by strict Puritans, and their rather gloomy view of life and death clearly shows in the reminders of mortality carved round the central inscription. The little bay near the east end of the aisle is also quite unusual. It originally held the long-lost tomb monument to a local worthy, but it is now the resting place for various pieces of medieval stonework, including a stone coffin lid with a foliate cross – that is, a cross with leaves; and the figure of a medieval priest, again from the top of a tomb in the churchyard.While we’re here, let’s take a peek into the south porch, if it’s open.
You’re now in the main body of the church. The nave is named from the Latin word for a ship – navis – because it holds the congregation like passengers on a boat. In some smaller churches, the nave actually looks a little like an unturned boat. But here, the roof of the mediaeval building was lifted up in the mid-15th century to get more light into the nave, with a row of clerestory windows – literally a clear storey above the roofs of the aisles. Putting a pitched roof on this taller nave would have been nearly impossible. And anyway, flat lead roofs were more fashionable, because they allowed you to show everyone that you were rich enough to afford expensive Derbyshire lead. Those huge beams that hold the roof up were cut from single trees, and when one of them had to be replaced in 1925, the workmen had to use the same type of ropes and pulleys that the medieval builders used. No room for a crane here! At each end of the nave, can you see the faint line of the old steeply pitched roof high on the end walls? Imagine what this great timber roof would have looked like, and how dark it would have been inside. Below the clerestory, each side of the nave is held up on a row of arches, called an arcade. These arcades lead into the aisles. Those on your left, the north arcade, are the older set - 13th century pointed arches, apart from the little Victorian arch squeezed in towards the far end that replaced a length of solid wall. See how the tops of the columns, the capitals, are heavy stone pads to take the weight of the arches. The furthest arch is just slightly older than the others. It may have led in to a transept – a side wing – before the north aisle was built. The south arcade, to your right, is about 200 years later, but this may have replaced an older set of arches. Can you see how the columns are slimmer, with almost no capitals; and how the arches themselves are wider and flatter. In fact, the whole south aisle looks very different to its opposite across the nave. Let’s have a closer look at it.
