Yeovil's Virtual Museum

The Crypt

The puzzle of a different architectural style

 

Once used as an ossuary (to store bones removed from the overcrowded graveyard) the crypt of St John’s church is located immediately beneath the chancel and sanctuary. It is reached by passing through the ornate doorway in the chancel’s north wall and descending the winding steps to the right (straight ahead being the vestry).

However, the crypt has always presented something of a conundrum. It was constructed in the Decorated Gothic architectural style that immediately pre-dated the Perpendicular Gothic style in which the entire above-ground structure is constructed.

It has been mooted that the crypt belonged to a former church on the site (Pevsner, 1958) or possibly the crypt of a former detached chapel, although these theories are now discounted. Another hypothesis reasons that the stonework for the crypt vaulting was cut before the church proper was started and the final decision made to adopt the newer, Perpendicular style. Perhaps the cut and dressed stone had been prepared for a completely different church that was never built and lay in store, to be used in the crypt of the new church in order to save costs.

Finally, it may be that William Wynford was not entirely happy with the new style at the time the crypt was started, but grew in confidence during the later planning stages. In any case, whatever the reason, St John’s crypt is in a different architectural style to the main fabric, albeit the whole being built as one structure.

The crypt has a large central octagonal pier and four quadripartite vaults with single-chamfered ribs rising from moulded corbels on the outside walls (see Gallery). Perhaps the most surprising feature of the crypt is that it has windows - being only half-dug into the sloping ground. On the south side, a piscina is incorporated into the window recess.

  

 

The ornate ogee-arched and crocketted pinnacled entrance to the crypt and vestry in the north wall of the chancel. 

 

This photograph features in my book 'The Church of St John the Baptist, Yeovil - a History and Guide'.

The vaulted roof of the crypt stairway with a central foliate boss and ribs springing from carved corbel heads.

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Looking back to the narrow crypt stairs from the crypt itself.

 

This photograph features in my book 'The Church of St John the Baptist, Yeovil - a History and Guide'.

The central octagonal pier in the Decorated Gothic architectural style.

 

This photograph features in my book 'The Church of St John the Baptist, Yeovil - a History and Guide'.

The quadripartite vaulting with single-chamfered ribs. Again, in the Decorated Gothic architectural style.