Holy Trinity Church

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SJ 99 NE 4/173

STALYBRIDGE TRINITY STREET (east side) Holy Trinity Church

G.V. II

Holy Trinity Church was constructed between 1851-1852 on land formerly part of the Castle Hall estate. The area was laid out in a grid pattern and the church was the first of a number of important civic buildings built here in the mid-late C19. The church was designed by Edwin Hugh Shellard (1815-1885), a Manchester based architect known for his ecclesiastical work in the mid-C19. Shellard was prolific across Greater Manchester and the north west of England, particularly gaining contracts for 'Commissioner's Churches' through the Church Building Commission. Although Holy Trinity does not appear on the list of Commissioner's Churches, it was built at the height of the drive by the Church of England to serve growing urban populations by building more places of worship in industrial towns. A major reordering and redecoration was undertaken in the 1990s replacing pews and renewing heating and electrical installations.

Holy Trinity Church is constructed of snecked stone with a slate roof. It has a projecting plinth and consists of a nave, chancel, aisles, clerestory, west tower and north porch. The parapet is set above a moulded band with gargoyles and moulded copings. The clerestory is of six-bays and the aisles have weathered buttresses which are diagonal at the corners. The three light aisle windows and two-light clerestory windows have rectilinear tracery and hoodmoulds, and the east window has five lights. The gable parapets are raked with cross finials. The three-stage tower has angled buttresses, a weathered plinth, a west door with crocketed ogee hoodmould, a three-light transomed west window, clock apertures in the second stage, two two-light belfry openings in the third stage with crocketed ogee hoodmoulds and is castellated. Octagonal columns with moulded capitals support the nave arcade and there is a West gallery. The interior has arch-braced roof trusses.

Listing NGR: SJ9640598431