St John's Church, Wolverhampton

St. John's Church is a Grade II* listed Church of England parish church in Wolverhampton.HistoryThe church was built between 1758 and 1776 to designs of either William Baker or Roger Eykyn. It was a response to population pressures resulting from the industrial revolution and to the perceived threat of Dissent and Roman Catholicism in an area where Anglican ministry was limited by a unique ecclesiastical structure.St John's was built as a chapel of ease of St Peter's Collegiate Church. The latter was a Royal Peculiar, entirely independent of the local Diocese of Lichfield. Its deans and chapter formed a college, a corporate body within canon law that had ecclesiastical control over a wide tract of Staffordshire in and to the north and east of Wolverhampton. The dean and chapter were absentee clergy who resented any threat, real or imagined, to their extremely lucrative monopolies: especially that on burials throughout the extensive parish and that on pews within the town of Wolverhampton. The deanery of Wolverhampton had been united with the far more prestigious deanery of Windsor since the late 15th century, encouraging the deans to be absentees – a situation that applied also to most of the prebendaries. However, Peniston Booth, dean from 1729 to 1765, took the unusual step of establishing a home in Wolverhampton and became more susceptible to local pressure for reform.