St John's Church, Wolverhampton

St. John's Church, Wolverhampton
The Church of St. John in the Square, Wolverhampton
Location	Wolverhampton
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Website	St John's in the Square at Parish of Central Wolverhampton website. Wolverhampton S.John at a Chrurch Near You.
History
Dedication	St John the Evangelist
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade II* listed
Groundbreaking	1758
Completed	1776
Administration
Parish	Central Wolverhampton
Deanery	Wolverhampton
Archdeaconry	Walsall
Diocese	Diocese of Lichfield

St. John's Church is a Grade II* listedChurch of England parish church in Wolverhampton.

The church was built between 1758 and 1776 to designs of either William Baker or Roger Eykyn. It was a response to population pressures resulting from the industrial revolution and to the perceived threat of Dissent and Roman Catholicism in an area where Anglican ministry was limited by a unique ecclesiastical structure.

St John's was built as a chapel of ease of St Peter's Collegiate Church. The latter was a Royal Peculiar, entirely independent of the local Diocese of Lichfield. Its deans and chapter formed a college, a corporate body within canon law that had ecclesiastical control over a wide tract of Staffordshire in and to the north and east of Wolverhampton. The dean and chapter were absentee clergy who resented any threat, real or imagined, to their extremely lucrative monopolies: especially that on burials throughout the extensive parish and that on pews within the town of Wolverhampton. The deanery of Wolverhampton had been united with the far more prestigious deanery of Windsor since the late 15th century, encouraging the deans to be absentees – a situation that applied also to most of the prebendaries. However, Peniston Booth, dean from 1729 to 1765, took the unusual step of establishing a home in Wolverhampton and became more susceptible to local pressure for reform.