OUR History

THE CHURCH

The following is taken from a leaflet available at the church.

The parish church of Hillingdon, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, stands at the top of Hillingdon Hill at its junction with Royal Lane. It is built of flint with bath stone dressings and, like many old buildings, has been altered and enlarged over the centuries to meet the changing needs of the parish.

The earliest written reference to a church in Hillingdon is the grant by Brian Fitz Count, Lord of Colham Manor, of Hillingdon Church to Evesham Abbey shortly after 1100. Nothing remains of that building.

The earliest part of the present building is acknowledged to be the chancel arch, dated around 1270. The western three bays of the nave and north and south aisles are dated mid-14th century, with the south aisle thought to be the earlier of the two aisles. The tower was built in 1629 to replace a medieval one taken down in 1623 because it was “ruinous.” It is embattled, of three stages, with a cupola containing a bell, and topped by a weather vane. The cupola is made of oak and is supported on six octagonal columns. The tower contains a peal of ten bells.

By the 1840s it was agreed that the church was not large enough to accommodate the growing local population (in 1847, it could seat about 600 people) and Mr (later Sir) George Gilbert Scott, a young architect, was appointed to report and advise. His report, dated 22 October 1846, recommended pulling down the existing chancel and extending the church eastwards, and adding north and south transepts. The extension was built in 1848-49 by Messrs. James Fassnidge of Uxbridge. The organ chamber was built alongside the south side of the chancel in 1887.

Major restoration was again undertaken in 1902. Dormer windows, removed in the 1848-9 rebuilding, were replaced in the roof of the nave and in the new part of the north aisle, and the chancel arch was raised in height by 4 feet 6 inches, thought to be more in keeping with the dimensions of the chancel. The gallery under the tower was removed in 1906 and tower repairs carried out in 1911 and again in 1981-6.

The east end of the north aisle was remodelled as a memorial chapel to the fallen of the First World war in 1922, and the war memorial was brought inside the church from its previous position on the outside of the north wall.

In 1964 a new vestry block, designed by Norman Haines, was built to the north east of the church. The latest development came in 2012 when the coffee bar area was added in the South Aisle and the altar platform was removed.

The church has many interesting memorials; the one that is most celebrated is also its oldest. At location CH50 there is a handsome brass relief carving on a slab of marble.  A notice adjacent to the slab explains that the slab was once the lid to a tomb made in
1509, and which once contained John, 8th Lord Strange, Baron of Knokyn and Jacquetta his wife. Jacquetta was the sister of Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, and mother of the princes in the Tower.