St John’s is a working church with Roman artefacts and many other historic finds on permanent display. Open every day (limited on a Sunday). Please check service times on the website.

Everybody is welcome to attend services at St John the Baptist, a beautiful medieval church in the heart of Chester.

As far as archaeology, architecture and history are concerned, St John’s particularly is unsurpassed and within this site you will find considerable detail ranging from solid facts to some interesting legends.

St John’s is a working church holding a number of services throughout the week. The Lady Chapel is a space for people to light candles, leave prayers, and sit in quiet contemplation.

The church can provide guided tours by arrangement, but there is generally someone on duty who can provide information about the church. To arrange a tour, please e mail.

The date of foundation in 689AD by Æthelred King of Mercia is likely to be set aside and the date taken further back, possibly to the third or fourth centuries AD as recent scholarship is revealing much about St John’s that was hitherto unknown; and it is possible that we may find that this beautiful Church is one of the oldest in Europe still used for the worship of Almighty God.

Æthelred of Mercia did build on the site of St johns around 689AD, but the site was already in use as a Christian centre

Evidence has come to light that the Saxon Minster was built of stone and it was to this great Minster Church that King Edgar came in 973 to receive the homage of his ‘Vassal’ kings as Rex Anglorum – King of the English. In 1075 Bishop Peter de Leya the first Norman Bishop removed himself from Lichfield, pulled down the Saxon Minster and commenced the building of his great Cathedral, a process that took some hundreds of years.

In the Middle Ages St John’s was known as the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St John the Baptist; it was supposed to own a relic of the true Cross brought back from the Crusades. It became a place of pilgrimage not only for the English and many from Gascony, but principally for the Welsh, as Edward I required the Nobility of Gwynedd to swear on the Holy Rood in St John’s that they would not be in rebellion against the King and this forged a link between the Welsh and the Church.

King Richard II enhanced the Cathedral Church in memory of his late Father, The Black Prince and this was not the last Royal connection as Henry VIII and Edward VI despoiled it and Elizabeth saved it; at a price – the lead from the roof. King Charles I was shot at by a sniper from the roof of the West Tower as he stood on the tower of the new cathedral to watch the battle of Rowton Moor.

In 1838 the Organ being built in London for St John’s was ‘borrowed’ by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of Queen Victoria and later in the Queen’s Reign St John’s, this hidden architectural gem was hidden behind a new Victorian ‘skin’. The Great West Tower collapsed in 1881 and together with the ruins at the East end is now part of the Scheduled Ancient Monument and Grade I Listed building that is the Church of St John the Baptist, Chester.