Church Of The Holy Trinity

The Church of the Holy Trinity was built in two distinct phases: the original church in 1861-2 by Arthur William Blomfield, and a substantial enlargement in the 1880s by the Manchester firm of Tate and Popplewell. They added a new nave in 1881-2 and built their chancel in 1885.

Materials and Construction

The church is faced in flint with brick and limestone dressings, and has clay tile roofs. The roofs of the 1860s church and the south porch feature alternating bands of plain and lobed tiles, creating a decorative effect.

Layout

The current worship space consists of a nave, chancel, and south porch. The earlier 1860s church to the north has been converted to parish rooms and offices. The original church had comprised a nave, chancel, and north vestry.

Exterior

Holy Trinity presents two distinct architectural characters reflecting its building phases. The original 1860s church is a vibrant, vigorous essay in High Victorian Gothic, typical of the young Arthur Blomfield's work at that time. The later 1880s additions are larger and plainer but broadly sympathetic to the earlier fabric.

The west front of the 1860s church faces the High Street and makes dramatic use of contrasting colours, textures, and shapes in its flint walling, red-brick banding and super-arch, and freestone window tracery. It has a gabled west doorway, the apex of which is flanked by a pair of two-light windows with quatrefoils in their heads. Positioned between these, under a superordinate flush brick arch, is a spherical triangle window containing four quatrefoils. Partly occupying the gable head and partly rising above it is a single-light bellcote in brick and stonework, angular in appearance with a 'waist' at the bell-opening. The north wall has two-light windows with quatrefoils in their heads, whilst the east window is of five lights with a complex series of foiled circles in the tracery.

The 1880s addition is both longer and wider than the original church, extending beyond it at both ends and sitting under its own gable roofs. It also features brick banding, though less conspicuously applied than on the 1861 work. The west front has a large Geometrical window of four lights with three circles in the head, flanked by a pair of trefoil-headed single lights. The two-light windows in the nave are no doubt reset from the earlier building. The east window presents an unusual design of five lights with the central light rising sheer to the head of the arch. At the west end of the 1880s nave, a clock projects at right angles to the wall surface.

Interior

The worship area now consists of the 1880s nave and chancel, with the old part of the building partitioned off behind the arcade in the late 20th century to provide parish rooms, toilets, and offices. The walls are plastered and whitened except in the chancel where bare brick is exposed.

The arcade between the two sections has five bays with polychromatic red brick and stone arches beneath a moulded hood. The circular piers are quite slender with moulded capitals and bases, the latter set on high plinths. The chancel arch is also polychromatic and rises from corbels.

The nave roof has arch braces to a collar which carries crown-posts and struts, and is horizontally boarded. The chancel has semi-circular trusses which are doubled to mark the junction of choir and sanctuary. The floors of both old and new naves are covered with late 20th-century wooden parquet flooring, whilst the present chancel floor has tiling. The sanctuary roof of the old chancel retains attractive but much darkened painted decoration, and the wall plate of the old church bears painted texts. Late 20th-century utilitarian partitioning screens the old church from the 1880s section.

Fittings

The church contains a number of fittings of interest. The reredos has a central gabled niche with three trefoiled arches on either side. The openings have detached grey marble shafts and plain backs of green and red marble slabs.

The pews are movable and have shaped ends with a vigorous and unusual profile incorporating small elbows and large quatrefoil piercings. The chancel stalls and desks have pierced fronts and probably date from the 1880s. The wooden pulpit of 1891, set on a stone base, is four-sided with pierced panels.

The font is unusually small and octagonal, with two rows of medallion and zig-zag ornament on the bowl, and a stylised foliage-covered neck between bowl and base. At the west end stands a late 19th-century clock with cased-in mechanism linked to the external clock face. The east window contains stained glass commemorating a death in 1884.

Churchyard

At the west and south-west entrances to the churchyard are robust brick and stone gate piers, no doubt dating from the 1860s build.

Historical Context

Population growth in mid-19th-century Stevenage occurred largely at some distance from the parish church of St Nicholas. An application for funds noted that 'Many who frequent the Baptist Chapel there would gladly go to a church if there were one near them.' It continued: 'An excellent site for the church at the South end of the town is offered by a Lady who also contributed to the funds.' Holy Trinity therefore became a chapel-of-ease to the parish church, where the rector was Canon George Blomfield.

His brother Charles was Bishop of London (1828-56) and also lord of the manor of Stevenage, and it is said, in contradiction to the funding application, that he gave the land for the new church. The church was designed by Arthur William Blomfield (1829-99), the fourth son of Bishop Blomfield, who would become one of the most successful and prolific of Victorian church architects. The design appears to have been in place in 1860, and the contract was let on 14 October 1861 for £1,127, with the total including perimeter walls and architect's fees estimated at £1,346. The church was built on what was described as 'a vacant plot of ground...[beside] the Great North Road' and consecration took place on 23 April 1862. The church had 208 seats, 200 of them free.

Blomfield had been articled to Philip Charles Hardwick and began independent practice in 1856 in London. He became diocesan architect to Winchester, hence a large number of church-building commissions throughout the diocese. He was also architect to the Bank of England from 1883. Blomfield was knighted in 1889 and awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1891. His early work is characterised by a strong muscular quality and the use of structural polychromy, often with continental influences. Pevsner and Cherry comment acerbically, but with considerable justice, that Holy Trinity is 'an early church of his, before his style became smooth and competent and stale.'

By the 1880s the church was 'very much too small...[and] people are frequently turned away from the Evening Service for want of room'. Curiously, Arthur Blomfield did not design the extension, the choice falling, for unclear reasons, on the little-known firm of Tate and Popplewell of Manchester. Their only other buildings mentioned in the Pevsner Architectural Guides are all in the north-west: the Hartley Victoria College, Whalley Range, Manchester (a training college for Primitive Methodist ministers), 1878-9; St Mark, Miles Platting, Manchester, 1884 (probably demolished); and St Peter, Hale, Cheshire, 1890-2.

Strangely, Blomfield was nevertheless consulted, for it was said the plan had 'the entire approval of the original Architect, Mr. Arthur Blomfield, who most kindly came down to Stevenage to confer with Mr. Tate as to the best practicable scheme.' Although designed together, the nave and chancel were built separately in 1881-2 and 1885 respectively, with the chancel being consecrated on 6 November 1885.