The Victorians’ passion for restoring churches is well known. At Tincleton they went further and completely demolished the standing church to start all over again.
St. John’s was built in 1849 and designed by Benjamin Ferry an eminent Victorian architect; he was employed on projects throughout the country and he strode across Dorset’s ecclesiastical landscape, working on at least ten churches in the county.
Ferrey was also responsible for work on several of Dorset’s private houses. St. John’s Church was not his first work in the parish of Tincleton; seven years earlier he designed, in 16th century style, Clyffe House located just a few hundred yards from the parish church.
The present church has walls of squared and coursed rubble, dressings of Ham Hill ashlar and the roof is tiled. Designed in 13th century style it comprises chancel, nave, a south chapel and vestry, and a north porch. The east wall to left and right of the reredos (1889), which is of alabaster and delicately cut, has stone arcading.
Above the west gable is a bell-cote, home to two bells. The smaller of the two bells was cast at the Whitechapel foundry in 1849 but little is known about the other except to say that it may have survived the demolition of the earlier church.
The church benefits from fittings handed down from the earlier building, including the font. It is of Purbeck stone, with course reeding in two heights between rounded top and bottom mouldings, originally 12th century, but reshaped in modern times; the stem and base are modern.
There are monuments inside the church to members of the Baynard family. The earliest is to Rachel Baynard (1667) the wife of Thomas Baynard and daughter of Thomas Moore of Hattesbury. There is a well-worn stone slab in the nave, near the chancel steps, to Thomas Baynard (1683) and another to Radolphus Baynard (1695). On the north wall of the nave is a marble tablet to George Baynard (1693). The south wall of the nave has a marble tablet to Mary White (1718), daughter of George and Elizabeth Baynard and wife of George White of Stafford. In the chancel there are more recent monuments to Anne Seymour (1844), Rev. Thomas Seymour (1849) and Jane Seymour (1850).
Tincleton whose population is thinly spread across its 900 or so acres lies to the south of Puddletown and north of the River Frome, it is approached by narrow secondary roads.
