Church Of Holy Trinity

Church of Holy Trinity, Darlington

Built 1836–8 by Anthony Salvin, this Early English Gothic Revival church stands on raised ground above a pavement on Woodland Road. It was constructed as a chapel of ease to St Cuthbert's church to serve Darlington's expanding population following the arrival of the railway. The foundation stone was laid on 4 October 1836. Application for a grant to the Incorporated Church Building Society was made by June 1834, and the church was expected to provide 1,010 seats, of which 600 would be free. The final cost was £3,404. The church was assigned its own parish in 1843.

The building is constructed of coursed sandstone with slate roofs laid in diminishing courses. The plan comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a north tower and porch, a northeast vestry, and a southeast organ chamber.

The striking north front features a two-stage tower with angle buttresses that have gables and copings. The tower has a doorway in a shallow gabled projection with stone slate copings, a moulded doorway with shafts bearing bell capitals, and a two-leaf 19th-century door with decorative strap hinges. A clock face in a round stone frame is mounted on the north face. The tower carries large double-chamfered belfry lancets, three to each face, embellished with shafts below a plain parapet. A projecting southeast polygonal stair turret with a pyramidal stone roof is attached.

The chancel has a graded triple lancet east window with hoodmoulds featuring toothed moulding and carved capitals. This window is said to have been recycled each time the east end was extended. Buttresses divide the aisles into four bays, each containing equal-height lancets arranged in groups of four, with the outer ones blind. The aisles have coped parapets above stringcourses. The west ends of the nave and aisles are treated as a single wide gabled composition with a plain parapet. The west window comprises three equal-height lancets above a circular window, with buttresses either side marking off the aisles, each bearing a single lancet west window. The northeast transeptal vestry has angle buttresses with deep set-offs, two-light lancet windows, and an octofoil in the gable, with a stack featuring a stone shaft. A lean-to choir vestry is attached to the east. The organ chamber has trefoil-headed lancet windows to the south with carved heads.

The interior walls are plastered and whitened. The dominant feature is five-bay arcading between the nave and aisles, comprising round piers with almost semi-circular double hollow-chamfered arches rising close to the wall-plate with no clerestory. A roll-moulded chancel arch on short shafts with acanthus-leaf capitals connects the spaces. The nave has a tie-beam and king-post and strut roof with one tier of purlins; the main trusses are arch-braced, the braces carried on stone shafts. The nave is thought originally to have had a flat ceiling. The chancel roof is arch-braced with cusped, pierced braces on moulded stone corbels, boarded behind the trusses with horizontal boards. Encaustic tiles floor the choir, while the sanctuary has a marble floor installed during a 1917–18 refitting.

A chancel with a transeptal organ chamber and vestry was added in 1867 by J Ross of Darlington and further extended around 1898 with a new northeast vestry. The seating was renewed in 1883 and again in 1909, when the flat ceiling over the nave was removed under the supervision of Durham architect C Hodgson Fowler (contractor R T Snaith and Son). The chancel was refitted in 1917–18.

The principal fixtures include stalls with poppyhead ends installed in 1917–18. Panelling formerly on the east wall of the chancel and a timber panelled reredos with blind tracery and coving have been moved to the west end; the reredos incorporates a tempera painting of 1918 signed by John Duncan. The font is made from polished Frosterley marble with a square bowl having chamfered corners on a stem of four shafts. A timber polygonal pulpit with traceried sides dates from 1898 and has a stone stem. Nave benches were installed in 1909 and feature curved shouldered ends with blind trefoils. The three-light west window is filled with glass by Wailes. The east window features impressively large figures by Daniel Cottier (1838–91), the pioneer of modern stained glass in Scotland. Two extremely fine windows in the north aisle are by Edwin Cook and are said to be the only stained glass he designed. Wall monuments include a large inscription panel in a stone frame to John Wood (died 1843), signed by J Day of Sunderland, with a bust in a niche above the frame.

The churchyard wall and gate piers to the north and west enclose the site. The pair of gates opposite the tower have substantial square-section verticals with sunflower finials above the lower and top rails; the gate piers are large and of square section with recessed corner shafts and tiered stone caps with finials. The west side has plainer square-section piers, also with tiered caps, and a single cast-iron gate with round-headed arches below the top rail.

Anthony Salvin (1799–1881) was a significant figure in late Georgian and early Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. Born in Worthing, he was a pupil of John Paterson (died 1832) and worked in the office of John Nash before establishing independent practice in 1828. He became well known for country house work and for creating buildings in an impressively authentic medieval style. At Holy Trinity he demonstrates a faithfulness to medieval Gothic that was unusual for its time. His biographer, Jill Allibone, described the church as "quite the best thing Salvin had done up to this date."