St John the Baptist church, Londonthorpe :: Shared Description
The church dedicated to St John the Baptist in the village of Londonthorpe stands on a hilltop overlooking Belton Park. The name Londonthorpe means ‘outlying settlement in the woods’. It is a Danish place name and marks where a Danish army demobilised and settled in 877 AD. There may well have been earlier Celtic and Anglo-Saxon settlements here. The hoard of Roman coins (pre 161 AD) found in 1976 at Manor farm suggests that a settlement here may have been a watering hole for Roman legions marching along Ermine Street nearby.
The church is thought to have been built originally around 1100AD and the first registers date from 1539. The church is a very attractive small stone building in the perpendicular style, consisting of chapel and nave both with a clerestory, South and North aisles and a South porch.
The Western tower has a saddle-back roof said to be one of only two in the county. The church once had a spire which was destroyed in Cromwell’s time. The tower has a pre-Norman window which now contains stained glass. The tower contains three bells, the smallest and the largest are dated 1609. The stone baptismal font stands beneath the archway of the tower on a plinth.
The Sanctuary has a carved oak screen with a seat behind on each side of the archway. The ancient altar rail is also oak. The east window, above the altar, shows St John the Baptist in stained glass. This was presented to the church in 1997 by the then organist.
The churchyard is particularly pretty and contains the graves of 31 soldiers from many regiments who lost their lives during the 1914-18 war, after coming for treatment in
the military hospital in Cherry Orchard, Grantham.
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Created: Fri, 28 Mar 2014, Updated: Fri, 28 Mar 2014
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