Holy Trinity Church, Lychgate And Section Of Boundary Wall

Holy Trinity Church, Lychgate and Section of Boundary Wall

Holy Trinity Church is a parish church built in 1850–1 by architects Henry Edward Coe and Edward William Goodwin of Sydenham. It was extended around 1860 by Coe alone. The church is constructed of knapped flint with limestone dressings and banding, and features a Welsh slate roof and shingled spire.

The building comprises a three-bay nave, narrow north aisle with entrance porch, broad south aisle with transept, north-east tower with vestry, chancel, and south chapel.

The exterior displays a distinctive twin-gabled west front with triple lancets and a small quatrefoil window to the nave. The south aisle gable has a circular window of four quatrefoils with two smaller lancets below, whilst the narrower north aisle has a single lancet. The stepped buttresses are topped with gablets. The south elevation has paired lancets to the aisle and single lancets to the lower transept. The Lady chapel features a diagonal buttress and a two-light traceried east window. The chancel is lit by a large traceried east window with trefoil-headed north and south windows and angle buttresses. The tower has a broad arched doorway on the north wall (originally the main entrance), louvred belfry openings to the upper stage, and a splay-foot broach spire. A small flat-roofed vestry projects to the east. The north aisle displays paired lancets.

The interior is plastered and whitewashed with splayed window reveals; those in the south aisle and chancel have their irregular quoins left exposed. The north nave arcade features double-chamfered arches and octagonal piers, whilst the south arcade is similar but with carved foliate capitals. The south transept has a simpler unmoulded arch. The chancel arch is supported on squat half-columns and carved corbels, with a hood-mould. The chancel wall contains richly carved sedilia: two cusped arches with crocket capitals on red marble colonettes. The east window reveal has two orders of mouldings with colonettes and a hood-mould with stops formed as carved heads. The nave and south aisle have scissor-braced roofs with false hammer-beams; the chancel has an arch-braced roof with boarded ceiling. The vestry has a flat panelled ceiling.

The fixtures and fittings are predominantly of the early twentieth century. The nave pews are of oak with linenfold end panels, dating to 1910, as are the choir and clergy stalls with linenfold and tracery carving. The font in the north aisle dates to 1851 and is accompanied by a later pyramidal oak cover and linenfold panelling to the baptistery area. The pulpit is oak with a stone base and wrought-iron panels, dating to 1891. War memorial panelling in the south chapel dates to around 1918. The organ case in the chancel, dating to 1910, is carved, gilded and painted. The high altar is oak with carved and gilded angel supporters and painted and gilded panels, set on marble steps with encaustic tiles, and dates to the early or mid-twentieth century. The chancel walls feature blind tracery panelling with some vestiges of earlier painted decoration.

The church contains a significant collection of stained-glass windows. The east window shows the Crucifixion (1888) by Burlison and Grylls. In the Lady chapel are the Annunciation (1913) and Presentation (1899), both by Burlison and Grylls, and Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ (1920) by Herbert Bryans. The south transept has St Theodore (1919) by Christopher Whall and St Birinus (1939) by James Ballantine. The south aisle contains St Stephen and St Lawrence (1892) and St Theodore and possibly St Birinus (1892), both by Burlison and Grylls. The north aisle displays Christ and Children (1906) by Christopher Whall, St Martin and St George (1900) by Christopher Whall, and St Oswald and St Edmund (1916) by James Powell & Sons.

A section of the original boundary wall stands to the west of the churchyard facing The Ring. It is constructed of red brick with flint panels and stone copings. The lychgate to the north-west of the church is constructed of heavy oak beams resting upon brick and stone dwarf walls, with timber traceried side panels and a hipped tiled roof with sprocketed eaves. It was relocated to its present position during the 1970s.

Bracknell was a tiny hamlet before the nineteenth century but had developed into a sizeable village by 1850, with expectations of further expansion following the anticipated opening of a station on the Staines and Wokingham Railway. Holy Trinity Church was constructed on the High Street to supplement the ancient churches of Binfield, Winkfield, Warfield and Easthampstead, which lay several miles distant. The church was consecrated in 1851. Around 1860, it was extended by the addition of a broad south aisle, south chapel, and north porch. A small vestry was later added to the base of the tower. Subsequent alterations were confined to the installation of fixtures and fittings: the present seating and organ were installed in 1910, and stained-glass windows by various designers were introduced as individual memorials and bequests.

In 1949 Bracknell was designated as one of the ten New Towns established under the New Towns Act of 1946. Over the following decades, almost all of the older settlement was demolished by the Bracknell Development Corporation to make way for a pedestrianised town centre surrounded by an inner ring road. The church, now isolated from the shopping area by the ring road, was one of the few older buildings to survive.

Henry Edward Coe (1826–1885) trained in the offices of George Gilbert Scott and George Edmund Street before establishing his practice with Edward William Goodwin in 1849. Holy Trinity Church was one of their first commissions. Other notable works included the Dundee Royal Infirmary (1852, Category A) and Christ Church in Redcar, North Yorkshire (1854, Grade II). Coe later entered into partnership with several other architects. With Henry Herbert Hofland, he won the initial competition for the Foreign Office in 1856, though the commission was awarded two years later to his former master George Gilbert Scott. With Frederick Peck, Coe designed the Agricultural Hall at Islington in 1862 (now the Business Design Centre, Grade II). In 1885, the year of his death, the National Agricultural Hall in West Kensington (now part of the Kensington Olympia, Grade II) was completed to his designs.