St John the Baptist is an Anglican parish church in

Middleton, Warwickshire Middleton is a small village in the North Warwickshire district of the county of Warwickshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 630. History At the time of the Domesday Book Middleton was under a Norman Over ...

. It is a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building. The 17th-century

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

Francis Willughby Francis Willughby (sometimes spelt Willoughby, la, Franciscus Willughbeius) FRS (22 November 1635 – 3 July 1672) was an English ornithologist and ichthyologist, and an early student of linguistics and games. He was born and raised at M ...

is buried there. The church contains an ornate memorial commemorating Francis, his parents, Francis senior and Cassandra, and his son, also Francis; this was erected by his second son,

Thomas Willoughby, 1st Baron Middleton Thomas Willoughby, 1st Baron Middleton (9 April 1672 – 2 April 1729), was a Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1698 and 1711 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Middleton as one of Harley's Dozen ...

History

The church dates from the 12th century, although there may have been an earlier Anglo-Saxon church on the same site, but it was enlarged by the addition of a north aisle in the 13th century, so only the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

walls and the lower courses of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

are original. the tower was added in the 15th century, and the church was extensively rebuilt in the 19th century, including adding the east window and plastering inside the church, hiding 14th-century wall paintings.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Middleton, Saint John The Baptist Grade II* listed churches in Warwickshire Church of England church buildings in Warwickshire Anglican Diocese of Birmingham