Church Of The Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity

A parish church built in two phases — 1872 and 1878 — designed principally by William Eden Nesfield for John Pemberton Heywood and his wife Anna Maria Pemberton Heywood. The building is angled towards the street, with its ritual west end actually facing south-west.

The church is constructed of rock-faced Grinshill sandstone with smooth ashlar dressings and tooled ashlar to the tower. It comprises a nave with a northern aisle, a north-eastern side chapel, a north-western tower incorporating a porch at its base, transepts, and a chancel. The structure adjoins the earlier almshouses and former schoolhouse (Nos. 1-6 Church Terrace, Grade II) at the western end of its southern flank.

The chancel, vestry, and transepts were completed in 1872 in Decorated Gothic style. The chancel features a three-light eastern window with cusped tracery and a quatrefoil at the apex, flanked by buttresses with offsets. Lateral chancel windows include a two-light south window with an encircled trefoil at the apex and three-light north windows with reticulated tracery. A projecting gabled vestry on the south side has two three-light windows with square heads, a priest's door to the east, and a stone chimney at the south-western corner. The south transept is a shallow projection with a two-light Decorated window. The deeper northern transept combines with a north-eastern side chapel featuring paired gables and two-light and three-light windows. A door in the lower walling of the transept has a lintel engraved 'A.M.H. 1872'.

The nave, completed in 1878, displays Perpendicular Gothic characteristics with rectilinear tracery to its windows and a crenellated parapet. String courses below the parapets of both nave and aisle carry large-scale bosses and rainwater spouts, with gargoyle heads at upper level. The chimneystack of the northernmost almshouse is incorporated into the nave parapet on the southern side. The western end contains a wide seven-light window with a prominent hood mould featuring large end stops in the form of dragons. At the gable apex is an angel corbel supporting a sceptre finial, with a large gargoyle spout to the south-west corner above a substantial diagonal buttress.

The tower at the western end of the northern flank, built in 1878, rises in three stages marked by small traceried two-light windows on the western face. The other faces are largely blank in their lower body, except the north face, which has a pointed-arch portal flanked by carved trellis in high relief supporting oak leaves and acorns on the left and roses on the right. To the left of the portal is an inscription reading: '+TO.THE.GLORY.OF.GOD / AND.IN.PIOUS.MEMORY / OF.JOHN.PEMBERTON / HEYWOOD.OF.CLOVERLEY / THIS.NAVE.AND.TOWER / WERE.ERECTED.BY.HIS / WIDOW.ANNA.MARIA / A.D.1878.' To the right is a coat of arms with the motto 'ALTE.VOLO'. The tower has diagonal buttresses with offsets at its northern corners, a polygonal turret at the south-western corner, and an angle buttress connecting to the nave parapet at the south-eastern corner. The top stage has pairs of two-light louvered openings to three sides and a single similar light to the west. The string course below the battlemented parapet carries prominent diagonal gargoyle spouts at the corners. Rainwater goods throughout the church are largely original, featuring moulded drain hoppers decorated with circular 'pies' and other motifs.

The interior is of considerable complexity despite the building's relatively modest size. Windows and arches have internal hood moulds with richly carved and boldly scaled end stops, possibly the work of James Forsyth, who had worked for the same architect and patron at Cloverley a couple of years earlier. The nave is panelled to its lower walling. The shallow-pitched nave roof is supported by wall posts rising from corbels at the height of the moulded clerestory window sill, with arched brackets connecting to cranked tie beams that have brattished tops and support panels of wooden tracery. Angel bosses at the centre of each tie beam have outstretched wings. The lean-to timber roof of the northern side aisle is simpler, springing similarly from wall posts. The north transept roof is panelled, and the chancel employs scissor beam construction with ashlar posts.

The nave consists of three bays with two clerestory windows on the north side and one to the south. An arcade of two bays connects the nave to the north aisle with simple cavetto and roll mouldings that harmonize with the chamfered mouldings of the earlier chancel and transept arches. At ground level, the tower contains a porch with a stone vault featuring hollow-chamfered ribs and carved bosses around a central boarded oculus. Flooring is of plain and patterned encaustic tiles in the chancel and wood block flooring in the nave.

Much of the church's fittings were designed by Nesfield, including the ironwork, choir stalls, altar rail, side screen, and an elaborate organ case with painted pipes and panels of Spanish leather. The pulpit features inlaid panels of marble and carving, with cupboards in the vestry. Carved and painted 'pies' — a characteristic Nesfield motif ultimately derived from Japanese ornament — decorate interior surfaces including window sills, the sedilia and piscina backs, and areas around the pulpit and organ pipes. The walling behind the altar was originally decorated with polychromatic tiles showing flowers and foliage in relief, but this was replaced in 1944 with oak panels featuring tracery tops.

Five monuments, four commemorating members of the Dod family, were repositioned from the old church. The war memorial is a wooden board with panels of blind tracery divided by miniature statues of servicemen, with St George at the centre and a tester projecting from the top.

The church contains a notable collection of late 19th-century stained glass commissioned in memory of members of the Heywood family. The western nave window, depicting the Ascension, was made by Hardman's and installed in 1879. The chancel east window of 1879, showing Christ in Majesty, is by Clayton & Bell. Both windows in the Lady Chapel are by Hardman, dating from 1879 and 1880. The northern chancel window of 1888, by Powell to a design by Henry Holiday, and the south transept window of 1898 by Powell, designed by Harrington Mann, complete the principal glazing scheme. The south chancel window is by Burne Jones and Morris, dating from around 1875.