St John the Baptist Church in Inglesham, near Swindon, Wiltshire, England, has Anglo-Saxon origins but most of the current structure was built around 1205. Much of the church has not changed since the medieval era. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade I listed building, and is now a redundant church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It was declared redundant on 1 April 1980 and was vested in the Trust on 28 October 1981. The church stands above the water meadows next to the confluence of the River Thames, River Coln and the Thames and Severn Canal. St John's was a particular favourite of John Betjeman, the poet, writer and broadcaster who was a founding member of the Victorian Society. Richard Taylor, presenter of BBC Four's Churches: How To Read Them, picked Inglesham as his favourite of the hundreds of churches he visited for the television programme, saying "It was a totally unassuming building, sat in the middle of the countryside. But, despite its humble appearance, inside, this church told the story of over 1,000 years of religious history – from Anglo-Saxon carvings on one wall, to medieval wall paintings on another and then passages from the Bible etched elsewhere from the Reformation". The programme also presented resistance by a local artist, William Morris, a founder of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, against Victorian redevelopment as a story of local campaigning in the 1880s. Much of the fabric of the building is from the 13th century, but includes remains of an earlier church on the site. The interior has wall paintings spanning over 600 years, often one on top of the other, up to seven layers thick. There is also a carving of the Mother and Child which dates from the Anglo-Saxon era; until 1910 the carving was on the outside of the church attached to the south wall and used as a sundial. There are also historic box pews, pulpit and memorials. History In 1205 King John gave the church to the Cistercian monks of Beaulieu Abbey. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX granted a licence, appropriating the church at Inglesham, amongst others, to the abbey of Beaulieu at the request of Henry III. In 1355, Inglesham manor and church were granted to a Leicester hospital, the College of the Annunciation of St. Mary. In the 1880s a