The parish of Harleston was created from the rural parish of Redenhall in Victorian times despite being the largest settlement within that parish. Harleston is a substantial market town lying around 19 miles south of the city of Norwich and sitting on, nowadays thankfully bypassed by, the A143 road which runs along the valley of the River Waveney and connects Diss with the Suffolk market town of Beccles. Harleston was created as a planned settlement in the 13th century, after the parish structures had been created, and was laid out as an elongated triangle based around a central market place. The planned settlement was initially successful and Harleston became an established market town by the 17th century. Besides providing a market for the local arable produce it also held an important fair specialising in lambs and cattle. The importance as a market declined during the 19th century as centres such as Norwich's regional markets and local competitive markets in Diss and Bungay took away trade. Today Harleston remains a centre for exchange of goods as well as a centre for specialist trades. The town has expanded greatly from its original triangle into a substantial town based upon a leaning oval of properties, on a northeast to southwest axis, formed by expansion of the original street axis. Modern developments of a railway line from the main Norwich to London line came and departed, the route of the railway now forming much of the improved A143's route. Up to the commencement of separate registers in 1844 all Harleston baptisms would have been recorded in the parish of Redenhall, a rural hinterland dwarfed in population by its market town.

St John's church sits on the eastern side of Broad Street, part of the original planned triangular street pattern with Broad Street being the more southerly street. Today's St John is a late Victorian replacement for the original late-medieval church which once stood here and in which most of these baptism took place. That church was completed in the 15th century and was typically Perpendicular in style. Today's church was completed in 1872 using the local flint but edging in a stone trim. The basic structure of nave and chancel is augmented by aisles, transepts and a polygonal apse but has no tower. Whilst Broad Street has street parking, one of the town's main car parks sits south of the church accessed by the narrow lane running beside it, a useful resource allowing an extended stay. Sadly for the photographer the church has a very constrained site, the whole northern and eastern aspects being heavily wooded whilst the southern aspects are impacted by close lying adjacent properties making for a challenging building to adequately collect.