Church Of Holy Trinity

CHURCH OF HOLY TRINITY

A parish church of early 13th century origin, substantially rebuilt in the early 14th century. The building stands on the east side of Bottisham High Street and is constructed primarily of clunch and limestone, with some original flint visible in the west porch. The exterior underwent extensive repair and restoration during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The west tower is embattled with two stages and crocketted finials at the corners. It features set-back buttresses and original lancet windows at the first stage. The adjacent west porch, also from the early 13th century, has a gabled roof now slated and rises two storeys. The gable end contains a two-centred arch framing a blind recess with a badly worn blank niche above a window serving a parish room. The west doorway is set in a two-centred arch of two chamfered orders, with the outer arch carried on a nook shaft with an annulet ring, bell-shaped capital and holdwater base.

The nave has clerestories on each side containing four early 14th-century windows of single trefoil light in two-centred arches, with splays of wave and hollow moulding. The South aisle, also 14th century, contains six windows (all restored) beneath which run a series of recesses in pointed arches, possibly for tombs, divided by 14th-century two-stage gabled buttresses. Flushwork appears in the side aisles. The south porch dates from the same period as the aisle, featuring inner and outer two-centred arches of continuous wave-moulded orders divided by a hollow moulding. The chancel, though 13th century in origin, has been rendered and its fenestration restored.

Internally, the west porch retains its original king-post roof truss. The staircase to the parish room, dating to around 1670, is of closed-string construction with flat section balusters and a square newel post topped with a faceted ball finial. The openings from the tower to the nave and porch are all early 13th-century work, consisting of two-chamfered orders in two-centred arches. The gable end of the early 13th-century nave roof is visible at the west end of the nave. The present seven-bay roof is of crown-post construction and dates to the late medieval period.

The nave arcade comprises five bays with two-centred arches of wave and hollow-moulded orders supported on quatrefoil piers with moulded capitals and bases. The filleted foils feature keeled minor shafts between them. The chancel contains an early 13th-century double piscina in two bays divided by a colonette with moulded capital and base. Three-seat sedilia feature similar colonettes. An early 14th-century piscina and sedilia occupy the south aisle.

Between the nave and chancel stands a 15th-century screen of clunch and limestone (restored in parts), comprising three bays each with two-centred arches in square heads with quatrefoils to the spandrels. The dado features closed panels, and below each side bay runs an arcade of four two-centred arches. The north and south aisles both contain oak screens of 15th-century date, reset and altered.

The church contains several notable monuments. In the north aisle is a late 16th or early 17th-century wall monument of clunch, painted, to Thomas Pledger (died 1599) and his wife Margaret (died 1598). Also in the north aisle is a black and white marble wall monument to Leonellus and Dorothea Allington, children of William and Elizabeth Allington, dated 1638 and attributed to W. Wright. In the south aisle stands a fine white and grey marble monument to Sir Roger Jenyns (died 1740) and his wife Elizabeth (died 1728). Also in the south aisle is a white marble monument to Soame Jenyns (died 1787) and his wives Mary and Elizabeth (died 1796), signed by the sculptor J. Bacon, R.A., and dated 1796. A stone panel, reset in the south wall of the south aisle and painted with the figure of a child, records the gift of a school by Sir Roger Jenyns in 1730.