St John's church is located on the north side of Wellington Street (A548) at its junction with River Street. The church had its origins in a congregation which was meeting in a school and in the skating rink of the nearby Winter Gardens before the church was built in 1885. The architect was David Walker of Liverpool. A striking and unusual design, perhaps conceived to provide a large and open plan for a church built to serve a rapidly growing area. It is constructed of random rubble stone with freestone dressings, slate roofs with red tile cresting and coped gables.
The plan is unconventional. A large octagonal nave with tall east and west arches opening out at the cardinal points onto a western one-bay clerestoried ante-nave, or narthex, transepts with clasping buttresses, and chancel, all linked across the angles by single-storeyed lean-to bays. Gabled organ chamber and vestries lie on the north and south of the chancel respectively, and a gabled porch projects from the lean-to south aisle of the western narthex. A bellcote is set above the chancel arch, and the octagon originally had a spirelet. The church is lit through a variety of window styles. Inside, the church opens into a large, spacious nave with ribbed octagonal roof surmounted by open-work timber lantern, the ceiling boarded and panelled, and the main ribs carried on wall-posts; coved ribbed and boarded roof over the chancel. The oak panelled reredos was originally at Saint Thomas's Church (NPRN 96042). The open-work panelled wood pulpit on stone base dates from c1890. Stained glass includes works by Goddard and Gibbs (east window 1970), Christopher Charles Powell (north-east angle of nave, 1932), and Alfred O Hemming (south-east angle of nave, 1906).
The church became redundant in 1999 and is now called Churchilll House.
Sources:

Cadw Listing description.
E.Hubbard, Buildings of Wales: Clwyd (1986), p.429-30.
Thomas Lloyd 2001, file 2001/03/02/RCAHMW/SLE.

RCAHMW, 10 November 2015