St John's Church is the Church of England parish church of the village of Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire. It is dedicated to St John the Evangelist and is a Grade I listed building. It is brick with a Ketton stone (a form of limestone) facing and a Collyweston stone slate roof.
History The earliest known building on the site was a medieval one with associations to the Knights Templar which was decaying by the 17th century but restored by Nicholas Ferrar and his family when they founded their religious community in the village at that date. Mary Ferrar had the church panelled with oak wainscoting, some of which survives on the south side of the present church's chancel. They installed an organ in March 1631–32 (now lost). Mistress Ferrar also donated the surviving brass font of c.1625 and the 15th-century brass lectern with eagle, while the current cedar communion table also dates from the Ferrars' occupancy.
That church was replaced by the present one in 1714 with a nave 8 feet shorter than its predecessor and removing the west gallery the Ferrars had installed.A History of the County of Huntingdon (Victoria County History, 1936) III:53–57 It was in its turn restored and altered in 1853.
The nave is wide and in length and fewer than 30 people can be accommodated in the stalls lining the wall of the nave. The chancel is wide and in width. On the south side of the chancel is a late 19th-century vestry which is a little larger than one half the width of the chancel.
Although photographs taken during the 1900s show an organ within the church, a 1999 survey for the National Pipe Organ Register stated that as of 1999, there was no pipe organ in this church.National Pipe Organ Register. Enter "Little Gidding" in the search box and press send.
An Order in Council published in the London Gazette on 13 March 1923, combined the United Benefice of Great Gidding with Little Gidding with the Benefice of Steeple Gidding.
St John's is listed in Simon Jenkins' England's Thousand Best Churches.
See also
Anglican religious order George Herbert Leighton Bromswold Little Gidding (poem) Saints in Anglicanism
References
External links
Friends of Little Gidding The Giddings, the website for the villages of Great Gidding, Little Gidding and Steeple Gidding Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire from a blog by James P. Miller (with photographs) St John's Church, Little Gidding Small Pilgrim Places Network; Little Gidding Records of St John the Evangelist, Little Gidding. Inventory of materials at the Cambridgeshire County Record Office, Huntingdon, United Kingdom
Videos Little Gidding–St John's Church October 2013 A Visit to Little Gidding Extracts from 'Little Gidding' - the poem by T S Eliot - read in Little Gidding