Church Of Holy Trinity

Church of Holy Trinity

Parish church of 1842 by the Sheffield architects John Weightman and Matthew Hadfield, enlarged in 1873-74 by T.E. Streatfeild of London.

The church is built of coursed and tooled local gritstone with freestone dressings and buttresses, under graded slate roofs. The original structure was cruciform in plan with a west tower and north porch. The 1873-74 enlargement added a south aisle, north organ chamber, and south vestry.

The exterior is Decorated Gothic in style, with the north elevation (overlooking the road below) forming the principal aspect. The church is extensively buttressed, including diagonal buttresses, and features a moulded stone cornice and coped gables. The dominant feature is the three-stage tower with a tall crocketed spire. The tower has diagonal buttresses from which pinnacles rise where the crown turns octagonal. The tall first stage contains a three-light west window, above which sits a short middle stage with clock faces and two-light belfry openings with louvres. A lean-to was added to the south side of the tower in the 1970s. The three-bay nave has two-light windows and a porch in the first bay. The later south aisle, under a separate roof, has a three-light west window and two-light south windows. The transepts have three-light windows. A segmental-pointed doorway sits on the south side, with a boiler room lean-to added in the late 20th century to its left. The chancel features a five-light east window and one-light cusped north and south windows. The north organ chamber is a shallow gabled projection with a round window incorporating four trefoil lights. The south vestry has a straight-headed three-light south window and pointed east doorway.

Inside, the south aisle and one and a half bays at the west end of the nave are separated from the main body by partitions. The south arcade has round piers and chamfered arches. The nave possesses an arched-brace roof with cusped arcading above the collar beams. The crossing is roofed with similar but crossed diagonal arched braces. There is no west crossing arch, but there is a chancel arch with an inner order on corbelled shafts. Transept arches have responds with filleted shafts, as does the tower arch. The chancel has a closed polygonal roof with one arched-brace truss; transepts have simple coupled roofs and the south aisle a hammerbeam roof. The east window has a shafted rere-arch, and sedilia bear quatrefoil decoration in the spandrels. Walls are plastered. Original floors are mostly concealed beneath carpets and a raised floor installed in the 1970s, which incorporates a tiled baptistery in the crossing. Nineteenth-century decorative tiles appear in the sanctuary floor.

The font is octagonal in Perpendicular style. Some 19th-century benches survive in the nave with shaped ends featuring roundels and arcaded frontals. The polygonal stone pulpit incorporates an open quatrefoil frieze. Metal plaques with the Decalogue, Creed and Lord's Prayer hang against the east wall, probably dating to 1842 but repositioned during the 1874 reordering of the chancel. The stepped reredos installed then is marble with inlaid roundels. The wooden communion rail on iron standards dates to the same period. Stained-glass windows include The Good Samaritan in the nave by Ward & Hughes (1889), a crucifixion in the east window, and the Nativity in the north transept (1923). Other transept and chancel windows contain coloured, patterned glass.

The church was built to serve the growing local population and the increasing popularity of Matlock Bath as a summer resort, though it is sited beyond the southern end of the main settlement. The 1873-74 enlargement by Streatfeild was executed in harmony with the earlier work. The interior underwent significant reordering in the 1970s, during which the south aisle and west end of the nave were partitioned off and their furnishings removed. Floors were raised in the nave as part of a scheme that included installing a baptistery in the crossing floor.