Church Of Holy Trinity, Bengeo

Church of Holy Trinity, Bengeo

This parish church was built in 1855 to the design of architect Benjamin Ferrey, with the chancel refurbished in 1884 by EB Ferrey. It was constructed when Bengeo developed as a residential suburb of Hertford and superseded St Leonard's as the Parish Church. Benjamin Ferrey (1810–80) was a pupil of Augustus Charles Pugin (father of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin) and designed numerous Gothic Revival churches.

The building is constructed of coursed squared rubble Kentish ragstone with ashlar dressings, yellow sandstone windows, and buttresses with flint panels, all under old tile roofs. The style is Early English 13th-century Gothic Revival.

The plan comprises a west tower and spire, nave, aisles and chancel. The west tower rises in four stages with angle buttresses, twin lancet openings to the belfry on all four faces with two-light louvres and circles above, and a carved cornice band with geometrical foliated ornament. A broach spire tops the tower with an iron cross finial. The west door features a moulded arch, dripmould and jambs, while the west window has three lights with geometrical tracery.

The nave and aisles are roofed separately across four bays, subdivided by buttresses with flint panels, stone quoins and offsets. Three-light windows with geometrical tracery and moulded dripmoulds light the sides. A north porch has an arch with undercut roll and casement mouldings. A vestry stands at the east end of the south aisle.

The chancel comprises two bays with two-light windows and a five-light east window with complex geometrical tracery incorporating circles infilling lancets.

Inside, the church is plastered throughout. The four-bay nave arcade features circular columns with bell capitals and chamfered arches. The arch-braced pitch pine roof is supported on aisle roofs with coupled rafters and scissor bracing. A gallery at the west end of the nave has supports projecting on wood brackets and a glazed screen to the ringing chamber. The chancel is raised two steps, with a white painted and gilded carved screen to the vestry. Its arch-braced purlin roof has two stages of scalloped windbracing across common rafters.

The reredos, dating from around 1884, features a heavily modelled central panel depicting Christ and the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes within carved stone frames with four granite colonnettes at the centre and a three-bay canopy with pierced tracery. Simple oak Gothic-style choir stalls with open fronts and moulded bench ends stand nearby. A carved eagle lectern on a turned baluster stand is positioned in the church, along with a pulpit featuring a sandstone base, pier and corbelling with an oak top with panels featuring cinquefoil heads below pierced square crosses.

The font opposite the north door has a bowl with foliated decorated-style panels and long trefoils, set on eight clustered shafts. A screen, possibly moved from the chancel, is placed in the west bay of the north aisle in simplified perpendicular style and was erected in memory of Robert Smith of Goldings (died 1894).

The organ was built by J Walker and Sons in 1877. A war memorial in the south aisle adjoining the vestry door comprises a mosaic panel of St George in an arched marble surround.

The east window is by Lavers and Barraud, dating from around 1894, and depicts Christ in Majesty with Faith, Hope and Charity in 16th-century style. It was created in memory of Mary and Charlotte Gosselin and Emma Trower, daughters of Admiral Gosselin of Bengeo Hall.