St John the Evangelist, Sandbach Heath, Sandbach

Sir George Gilbert Scott designed this church in Late Thirteenth Century style and it was built between 1860-1 in brick sized yellow stone with red sandstone dressings. It also included geometric plate tracery, a crossing tower with a spire and ashlar interior. Pevsner noted that it had ‘many seriously considered details’, such as the contrast between the east and west windows with stained glass by Clayton and Bell, the proportion of the spire and the arcading to the chancel. Scott also provided polypodal stone base to the pulpit, a square font and a screen of which Anson said, ‘He inserted the most wonderful Venetian Gothic tracery in a two- plane screen, between the choir benches and the vestry’.

Anson, P. F., Fashions in Church Furnishings 1840-1940 (Studio Vista, London, 1965), p. 157.