The Family Search website tells us, briefly, about the bells:
Before the erection of the present tower there was only one bell. This was given to the chapel in 1650 by William, Lord Grey, and was retained at successive rebuildings. In 1911–13 the old bell was re-cast and 7 new ones added.
The Epping Anglicans website tells us about the history of the church:
The present Church of St. John the Baptist stands on the site of earlier Chapels.
The ‘Free’ Chapel established by William the Conqueror was replaced several times and there are records of a chapel on this site in 1662. This Chapel was ‘restored’ in 1782 and completely re-built in 1832. Old prints of Epping show that it stood on part of the present site but in line with the High Street rather than at right-angles to it as now.
It was this Chapel that was re-placed in 1889/90.
During this period the ‘true’ Parish Church of Epping was at what is now known as Epping Upland (two-and-a-half miles north of Epping). The Church in Epping was never more than a chapel within the ecclesiastical parish of All Saints’ Epping Upland.
All this changed with the building of St John’s.
An Act of Parliament which received the Royal Assent on 7th August 1888 provided for the pulling down of the old Chapel of Saint John the Baptist in Epping and the building of a new Church. Furthermore the new Church was to be designated the ‘Parish Church’ and the old church at Epping Upland was to become a ‘Chapel-of-Ease’ within the new Parish.
Thus the church which was originally the 'mother' church, became the ‘daughter’.
In order for the new Church to be built the generous benefaction of several local families was necessary.
As early as 1848, John Clarmont Whiteman of Theydon Grove, Epping, gave a parcel of land (110 feet by 77 to 85 feet) for the expansion of the old Chapel. No expansion took place but the land was to be a key gift in the building of St. John’s which occupies the land then given.
A relative of John Whiteman, Miss Elizabeth Horsley Whiteman, offered £3,000 towards the cost of a new Church in 1886, with the quaint proviso that work must be in hand by the 31st March 1890.
Large though her generosity was, it was insufficient to finance the work. It became possible through further gifts, particularly from the Wythes Family of Copped Hall. As Patron of Epping Upland Church, Ernest James Wythes felt it his duty to “promise such substantial help as will make the undertaking practicable.” He gave a further £4,000.
Trustees were appointed to oversee the work and further benefactions followed.
St. John’s was thus built because of the generous vision of local Epping people.
The Church of St. John the Baptist was completed in three phases.
The Foundation stone was laid in 1889 and the Nave and Chancel were completed in 1891.
The North Aisle was added in 1908 in memory of The Revd. Edward Buckmaster, who had been Vicar from 1888-1906, and who had overseen the building of the new Church.
In 1907 the foundation stone for the Tower had been laid on December 4th.
It was dedicated by the Bishop of St. Albans (in whose Diocese St John’s was at that time) on April 28th, 1909.
Thus, over a period of 20 years, St. John’s was completed in three stages but to one comprehensive architectural design.
The church is a Grade II* listed building with the entry at the English Heritage website telling us:
By Bodley and Garner 1889-91, nave, chancel and south aisle. By G F Bodley: 1907-9 tower, 1908 north aisle and south porch. Some of this work is posthumous as Bodley died in 1907 and the practice was continued by C G Hare as Bodley and Hare.
MATERIALS: Bath stone ashlar. Clay tile roofs to the nave and chancel. Aisles lead-covered.
PLAN: Nave and chancel in one, north and south aisles, south chapel, north organ chamber and room beyond to the east, south-east tower/vestry and link to this from the south chapel.
EXTERIOR: The east end of the chancel abuts directly on to the High Street and the tower is placed tightly in the angle between the High Street and St John's Street. Stylistically the architecture draws upon medieval architecture of the early C14, as was often the case in Bodley's work. The most significant visual feature is the tower. This is of three stages, has angle buttresses and a clock (by Thwaites and Reed of Clerkenwell) projecting from the second stage over the High Street. The ground stage of the tower has a recessed centrepiece with a two-light window flanked by buttresses and a pair of blind arches. The middle stage of the tower is very plain although at this level the buttresses contain figures under canopies. The belfry stage has pairs of two-light windows filled with cusped lozenge tracery. At the top the tower has openwork battlements. Against the west face of the tower on the ground storey there is a polygonal, embattled stair turret. At the east end of the chancel there is a large seven-light window, blind below a transom (because of the large reredos internally), and with highly ornate tracery above which fuses Geometrical and Decorated forms with lavish reticulations and cusped circles. The rest of the fenestration is rather more conventional and is mostly of three lights: in the south aisle the tracery is flowing Decorated tracery, in the north aisle there are also pairs of mullions rising to each arch head. At the west end there are a pair of three-light Decorated windows. The aisles have low, plain parapets. There is no clerestory.
INTERIOR: The walls are plastered and whitened. The internal arrangements are typical of Bodley's later churches with tall, elegant arcades made possible by the absence of a clerestory. The nave and chancel form a single volume, demarcated by a screen rather than a structural division. The south aisle and south chapel are similarly separated. The organ blocks the east end of the north aisle. The nave is of five bays and has quatrefoil piers with fillets on the main lobes and rolls and fillets in the hollows: the arches, capitals and bases are moulded. The chancel is of two-and-a-half bays and has pairs of arches on either side with similar detailing to that in the nave. The roof covering the nave and chancel is of the boarded wagon type: it is painted blue and has a text running at wall-plate level.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: The nave and chancel are separated by a fine, vaulted rood screen by Bodley with single-light divisions containing delicate tracery in the heads. The screen supports a large and striking rood group. The screen between the south aisle and chapel is lower than the rood screen but similar in style. There is a further screen between the chapel and chancel. The focus of the chancel is a larger, continental-style triptych reredos of the kind favoured by Bodley although in this case it dates from 1909 and is the work of Bodley and Hare. The central part depicts Christ in Majesty, the Last Supper and other scenes: the winds have angel figures playing musical instruments. The tall organ case of 1892 rises to the wall plate and is another impressive piece which bears florid pierced tracery-work. The polygonal wooden pulpit, of wine-glass type, dates from 1889 but was rebuilt in 1914: its figures stand under richly traceried canopies. The chancel stalls are relatively plain while the nave and aisles are seated (and always have been) with chairs. The font has an octagonal bowl with shields in recesses and stands on a base surrounded by Frosterley-type marble shafts. The east window contains a fine window of 1890 by Burlison and Grylls, who were one of Bodley's favourite makers. Two windows in the south chapel of 1902 and the west window of the south aisle are by C E Kempe. The north aisle has a window of c1909 by Gamon and Humphry.
HISTORY: The parish church of Epping stood at what is now Epping Upland but a chapel has stood on the site of St John's, it is said, since at least 1397. The immediate predecessor of the present St John's, however, was a chapel built in 1832. In approximately 1886 Miss Elizabeth Horsley Whiteman offered £3000 towards a new church provided work was in hand by 31 March 1890. Further funding came from the Wythes family of Copped Hall. Ernest James Wythes subscribed £4000. How Bodley was selected as architect is unknown. The memorial stone was laid on 6 November 1889 and the church was dedicated on 8 April 1891. The tower was dedicated on 28 April 1909.
George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) was one of the key figures in C19 church-building. He was a pupil of George Gilbert Scott for five years from 1845 and remained with him until he set up in independent practice in 1856. His early work is mostly in a muscular, taut style that is characteristic of the time but in the early 1860s he reacted against what he saw as the excesses of High Victorian architecture and helped lead the way to more restrained versions of Gothic. The pivotal building was All Saints, Jesus Lane in Cambridge of 1863-4. In architecture he aspired to what he called 'refinement' and many of his later buildings have great elegance. This is certainly true of St John's Church in Epping although it is very much of the standard type of late Bodley church with C14 detail, a nave and chancel in a single volume, a wagon roof, high aisles extending to the east end, and no clerestory. As Nikolaus Pevsner commented Epping 'got a church of remarkable dignity if not striking originality.' He felt the tower was the outstanding feature of the church. The completion of St John's was at the end of Bodley's life. In 1907 he was joined as a partner by Cecil Hare (1875-1932) who, after Bodley's death in October that year, continued to work in the Bodleian idiom.