St John the Baptist Church, Inglesham

St John the Baptist Church, Inglesham
St John the Baptist Church, Inglesham, from the southeast
St John the Baptist Church, Inglesham Location in Wiltshire
Coordinates: 51°39′59″N 1°42′16″W / 51.6663°N 1.7045°W / 51.6663; -1.7045
OS grid reference	SU 205 984
Location	Inglesham, Swindon, Wiltshire
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Website	Churches Conservation Trust
History
Dedication	Saint John the Baptist
Architecture
Functional status	Redundant
Heritage designation	Grade I
Designated	26 January 1955
Architectural type	Church
Style	Anglo-Saxon, Gothic
Specifications
Materials	Rendered rubble stone, Stone roofs
Administration
Parish	Highworth with Sevenhampton and Inglesham
Deanery	Swindon
Archdeaconry	Malmesbury
Diocese	Bristol
Province	Canterbury

St John the Baptist Church in Inglesham, Swindon, Wiltshire, England, has Anglo-Saxon origins but most of the current structure was built around 1205. Much of the church has not changed since the medieval era. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and is now a redundant church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It was declared redundant on 1 April 1980 and was vested in the Trust on 28 October 1981.

The church is just above the surrounding water meadows next to the confluence of the River Thames, River Coln and the Thames and Severn Canal. St John's was a particular favourite of John Betjeman an English poet, writer and broadcaster who was a founding member of the Victorian Society and Poets Laureate.Richard Taylor presenter of BBC Four's Churches: How To Read Them picked Inglesham as his favourite of the hundreds of churches he visited for the television programme, saying "It was a totally unassuming building, sat in the middle of the countryside. But, despite its humble appearance, inside, this church told the story of over 1,000 years of religious history – from Anglo-Saxon carvings on one wall, to medieval wall paintings on another and then passages from the Bible etched elsewhere from the Reformation." The programme also presented resistance by a local artist, William Morris, a founder of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings against Victorian redevelopment as a story of local campaigning in the 1880s.