Church Of The Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity, Eckington

The Church of the Holy Trinity is a 12th-century church with a 15th-century tower, substantially altered and enlarged in the 1830s and 1887. It is constructed of squared sandstone with rubble stone to the nave and chancel, topped with tile roofs, though the north aisle is of brick with a slate roof.

The plan comprises an aisled nave with a lower and narrower chancel, a south-west tower, and a north-east organ chamber. The Perpendicular tower is three stages tall with set-back buttresses in the lower two stages and an embattled parapet. The lowest stage contains a blocked chamfered south doorway and a 3-light west window, while the second stage has a west clock-face and small south window. The upper stage contains 2-light bell openings. The tower projects in front of the nave's west wall, which displays a relocated 12th-century doorway moved here in 1831 from the north wall when the aisle was constructed. This doorway features nook shafts with foliage capitals and a round arch decorated with chevrons. Above it is a 19th-century 4-light Perpendicular window that appears to have replaced 13th-century lancet windows. One surviving 13th-century window with a billet frieze on the label remains on the west wall's left side; another is visible internally but is blocked by the tower.

The south aisle has three 2-light Decorated windows from 1869 and a pair of 13th-century cusped lights in its east wall. These cusped lights are offset from the centre, revealing that the aisle was originally narrower. The north aisle comprises three buttressed bays with pointed windows, the outer bays retaining Gothic iron-frame glazing bars. It was extended westwards in ashlar in 1836 with a 2-bay buttressed Tudor-Gothic schoolroom featuring a moulded eaves cornice and 2-light square-headed north windows. The schoolroom's west front comprises a 3-light Perpendicular window over a studded door beneath a square label with carved spandrels, designed to balance the tower on the south side of the nave.

The chancel has diagonal buttresses and contains two large single-light windows in its south wall, along with a low priest's doorway with a large lintel. Its east window displays cusped ogee lights, and the north side has one 2-light Decorated window. The organ chamber has a parapet that conceals the roof and obscures a blocked east doorway in the north aisle.

Internally, the tower contains 15th-century north and east arches with continuous hollow mouldings and semi-circular responds. A statue niche under an ogee canopy is located in the outer north-east angle. The three-bay late 12th-century south arcade features round piers, scalloped capitals, and stepped round arches. The north arcade is an 1887 copy of the south. The chancel arch is 19th-century work with semi-circular responds, a stepped arch, and a label with billet frieze.

The nave roof is predominantly medieval, though restored in the 19th century. It includes richly carved beams and braces, with three trusses on corbelled posts featuring tie and collar beams strengthened by arched braces. Alternate collar-beam trusses are closed with blind tracery above the collars. The south-aisle roof, constructed in 1928, has tie beams with raking struts on corbelled brackets. The north aisle features a canted plaster ceiling with moulded ribs and a moulded cornice on the south side only. The chancel has a canted boarded ceiling with two castellated tie beams and similar moulded cornices. The walls have been stripped of plaster. The nave and aisle floors comprise stone paving, black and red tiles, and grave slabs dated 1700 to 1845 in the nave, with wood-block floors beneath the benches. The chancel is stone-paved.

The principal fixtures include a plain round font bowl possibly dating to the 13th century, supported on a stem of four clustered shafts. Benches of 1887 have fielded-panel ends. Also from 1887 is the panelled pulpit on a stone base. Choir stalls designed by Walter and Florence Camm and made in 1925 by R. Bridgeman & Sons of Lichfield have fielded panels to ends and fronts, with two retaining misericords. The sanctuary features a panelled dado and a communion rail with trefoil-headed arches. The north aisle displays an 18th-century Hanoverian Royal Arms.

The chief memorial is a large Jacobean wall monument in the chancel to John Hanford, who died in 1616, probably by Samuel Baldwin. It depicts the husband and wife kneeling and facing each other across a table, mounted on a chest with weepers and framed by a round arch with outer Corinthian columns, entablature, and achievement. Further wall tablets from the 18th and 19th centuries commemorate Christianus Kenrick (d. 1711) and Flock Kenrick (d. 1746), the latter by Richard Squire.

Several windows contain stained glass. The east window, made in 1925 by Florence Camm for Thomas William Camm of Smethwick, depicts the Nativity. The same firm created the south-west chancel window showing St Cecilia, incorporating 14th-century fragments, in 1937, and the Annunciation in the south aisle east window in 1929. The chancel south-east window shows St Hilda and St George, created in 1923 by Stanley Watkins of Ealing. Two windows of 1969 by Joseph Nuttgens depict the Crucifixion and Resurrection in the chancel north window and the Holy Trinity in the north aisle.

The church has a 12th-century core comprising the nave, south aisle, and chancel. The tower was added in the 15th century. The north aisle was added in 1831 to plans by Richard Hope of Pershore and was extended in 1836 with a vestry and schoolroom. The south aisle was widened with new windows in 1869. Major works in 1887, undertaken by contractor Thomas Collins of Tewkesbury, included constructing the present chancel arch and north-aisle arcade and restoring the nave and chancel roofs. The organ chamber was added in 1908. The south-aisle roof trusses were built in 1928 by architect Francis Andrews of Birmingham, with contractors Phelps and Johnson of Worcester.