Holy Trinity Church

Holy Trinity Church is an Anglican church built between 1876 and 1878 on Dean Street in Ashton-under-Lyne. It was designed by the architects Henry and Medland Taylor for the patron George Heginbottom. The church was erected at a cost of £10,000 on land given by the 7th Earl of Stamford and Warrington, and was designed to seat between 700 and 800 people. Late 20th-century alterations by G. Holland provided community facilities within the church.

The building is constructed of red brick with blue brick banding and patterning, combined with ashlar sandstone dressings. It features coped gables and patterned Welsh slate roof coverings. The church has a complex plan: a tall nave roof extends over the chancel and apsidal sanctuary, with a single-storey chevet beyond the south aisle containing an organ chamber to the east end. The north aisle has a vestry porch also positioned to the east end.

The western end is dominated by a buttressed belfry set above a lean-to baptistry and flanking porches. The west gable is pierced by stepped piers of twin flying buttresses supporting pilaster buttresses to the gabled belfry, which contains three bell-openings set in stepped pointed arches. Diaper work patterning decorates the nave gable, with tall twin lancets below a stepped roundel containing a quatre foil light to the centre, and single outer lancets beyond the buttresses. A 3-bay lean-to section contains 3 lights to the baptistry and 2 lights to the flanking porches. The porch doorways sit beneath moulded brick stepped arches with simple hood moulds above, and feature double planked doors with decorative scrollwork and hinge straps.

The chancel comprises five bays with four-bay aisles, the west end bay serving as a stair bay on each side. Each bay carries 2 pairs of coupled clerestorey lancets, with 1:2:2:2:1 lancets to each aisle including the stair bay. Low buttresses define the aisle bays, while pilasters mark the clerestorey bays. The projecting south gable organ chamber has twin lancets, and a south vestry door with a stepped segmental arch rising from shouldered springers. Decorative ironwork hinge-straps throughout the building feature a trinitarian motif, with double triangle straps in various forms.

The chevet contains 4-light windows. The sanctuary features cusped 2-light windows and windows with cinquefoil heads below quatrefoils in the septagonal sanctuary clerestorey. The north side wall includes a gabled vestry chamber and a lean-to vestry porch to the east, with a faceted link between the north aisle and vestry expressed externally as a corner tower vestry roof. This roof is pierced by a pier of flying buttresses supporting a tall moulded brick chimney stack with a heavy corbelled cap.

The interior features arcade piers of grey granite carrying stepped pointed arches of moulded brick. The nave and clerestorey walling is patterned in red and yellow brick. Compound chancel arch piers are of red granite with limestone capitals decorated with foliage. The sanctuary arcade is carried on red granite columns set against a screen of repositioned choir stalls. The altar rail and plinth wall were removed during re-ordering. Benches and a decorative screen are positioned in the vestry, with a pierced timber screen featuring quatrefoil openings separating the organ chamber from the entry to the chevet. Stained glass windows to the side walls depict St. Augustine and St. Chad on the south side, and St. George and St. Alban on the north side.

The roof is complex, featuring arch-braced king post trusses with curved close-pace struts alternating with arched scissor-braced trusses. The west end is now screened off and floored to form community facilities, and encloses a 3-bay screen of columns that formerly separated the nave from the baptistry.