Redhill, St John the Evangelist
Pendleton Road, Redhill, RH1 6QA Find on map
Number of bells: 8
Tenor Weight: 14 cwt
Ground floor ring: No
District: Southern
Practice Night: Thursday
Ringing Times: Sunday Service: 10:00-10.30am,. Practice: 7.30-9.00pm
Entry: Entry is via the church main entrance in the North Porch. If this door is locked, a phone number for access is displayed on the door. Once inside, the door to the first floor Ringing Chamber is on the far side, through the glass doors and to the right.
Contact: Tower Secretary: gail.terry@btinternet.com Gail Terry. Tower Captain: Anne Rueff bells@stjohnsredhill.org.uk
Website: www.stjohnsredhill.org.uk/bell-ringing
The first church here was built, on a prominent site on a spur of the North Downs, to designs by J T Knowles (Senior) in 1843. To this aisles were added to designs by Ford & Hesketh 1867. The great change came in 1889, when J L Pearson was called on to remodel the church. He replaced the original building with a new nave and chancel, retaining the 1867 aisles, and in 1895 he added a new south-west steeple. The Pearson work is faced externally with stock brick with stone dressings, contrasting with the flint facings of the aisles.
Pearson's building is typical of his major churches, and shares characteristic features with such buildings as St Stephen, Bournemouth, All Saints, Hove, St Augustine, Kilburn and St John, Upper Norwood. The nave has five bays with arcades and clerestory. The west entrance is under a stone vaulted gallery and the timber roof is supported on stone transverse arches carried on shafts attached to the older arcade pillars. The three-bay chancel is narrower, the space being occupied by passage aisles for the western two bays, separating the chancel from a chapel on the south and organ chamber on the north. The south-west steeple rises to 185ft. The tower has shallow set-back buttresses and a short octagonal spire with corner spirelets and single lucarnes.
The eight bells, tenor 13cwt, are by Mears & Stainbank, 1895, rehung in 1972 by Whitechapel.