St. John the Baptist Anglican Church, Hillingdon, Uxbridge, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (March 2024)

A charming and lovely church across the street from my hotel. The staff and visitors there were very welcoming and friendly! This is a beautiful church with a great atmosphere and very positive energy all around! What a blessed experience to have met everyone here and to have seen such historic and beautiful places.

🙏❤️✝️Praise be to God Most High✝️❤️🙏

St. John the Baptist C of E Church (googlemaps)

St. Johns Hillingdon Church website

“St John the Baptist Church in Hillingdon contains a rich crop of monuments: two major ones from the 17th and 18th Centuries, and about 30 tablets from the 1600s through to the 20th Century, with particular strengths in the earlier period. The church stands a little outside from the town centre of Uxbridge, on the Hillingdon Road – Hillingdon Tube Station is no nearer than the Uxbridge one – but is easily walkable from either.

The body of the church itself is of the 14th Century, with some bits from the 13th Century and the square tower dating from 1629. It had a major restoration in the 1840s – the longer nave and chapels, and the chancel were added at this time, though the chancel arch is the very earliest part of the church: it retains a corbel with carvings of little beasts and a head. One of the two symmetrical aisles has several small carved half-figures as corbels supporting the beams of the roof – odd little things, cramped and medieval.”

Ref: Hillingdon Parish Church

Beautiful music in the Beautiful church

“Sir Edward Carr, d.1636/7, put up by his wife Dame Jane, daughter of Sir Edward Onslow of Knowle. A grand monument of the kneelers type (see this page), but of a size and quality far above the norm. The freestanding white marble figures kneel on cushions, facing each other across the normal little prayer desk. He wears armour above baggy trousers and tall, crinkly boots; she a fine skirt and top with puffed arms, and a cap above her ringletted hair. In front and facing forwards, two daughters, of much smaller size, the elder as a miniature young woman, the younger clearly a small child, both standing and holding hands. The group rests on a chest tomb, and a free standing pillar rises on each side, then a square pilaster, with in front of it a shorter pillar bearing the beast from the relative crests of the two families – a white hart for Sir Edward, an eagle for Dame Jane. Above, a canopy with tall pointed centre, leaving space for a large shield of arms (his). Knotted curtains are drawn up on each side, and on top, on either side of the central peak in the spandrel positions, sit relatively large allegorical girls. Justice is on the left as we look at the monument, holding her scales in one hand, the other snuffing out a long torch, indicating the extinction of the male line, though the two daughters included in the monument survived him [for those anxious as to the continuation of the family, it will be reassuring to know that his elder daughter, Philadelphia, married a baronet and had 9 children, some of whom kept a connection with Hillingdon]. On the other side, the figure holds a Victory wreath with a dove sitting inside, rather touchingly (it may represent the soul, thus ‘victory over death’), and in her other hand, a leafy branch. Both figures are of course classical, wearing long drapes leaving arms and feet bare. (If you like allegorical figure sculpture, there are many on this site, linked on this page.) The whole ensemble combines a variety of white, black and coloured marbles and alabaster, and has a variety of additional minor carving and winged cherubic heads to give an overall sense of richness and opulence. One of the inscriptions on the base notes the repair of the monument in 1775, by the Rt Hon George Onslow.”

Ref: Hillingdon Parish Church