St. John the Baptist, Belper, Derbyshire
Description
The old chapel of St. John the Baptist, probably founded about 1250 by Edmund Crouchback, second son of Henry III. is a building in the Early English Lancet style, consisting of chancel and nave under a single roof, south porch, and a bell-cote on the western gable, containing one bell, inscribed, "God save his church, 1699:" the font is an octagonal basin, on a similarly shaped shaft and base: in the south wall of the chancel are the remains of a sedile and a piscina in a small pointed niche: the ancient stone altar, still fixed beneath the east window, is supported by brackets: the chapel was partly restored in 1866 by the Late Rev. Robert Hey M.A. vicar of Belper 1845-85, and in 1877 a stone reredos was erected by the Rev. Herbert Monk M.A. vicar of St. Peter's, Newton-in-Makerfield, in memory of his father: a new chancel screen has since been erected and the floor repaved with encaustic tiles: opposite the porch remains the base of an old cross, restored in 1880: the ground was not consecrated for burials till 1793.
Church Records
The register of baptisms for St. Peter and the old chapel of St. John the Baptist date from 1783, of burials from 1794 and of marriages from 1847.