Holy Trinity Church

Holy Trinity Church

Parish church founded in 1840, with the chancel and north chapel added by G E Street in 1860. The remainder was rebuilt by J O Scott between 1887 and 1890, followed by various later alterations.

The church is built of red brick with bands and dressings of blue brick and Bath stone. Scott's additions incorporate knapped flint flushwork. The roofs are a mixture of slate and clay tiles with ornamental cresting, and the spire is shingled.

The building follows a cruciform plan with a four-bay aisled nave, south-west porch, transepts and crossing tower, and a chancel with an organ chamber to the south and a chapel and vestries to the north.

Scott's work of 1887–90 dominates the exterior, comprising the nave, aisles, porch, transepts and tower. The style is an Arts and Crafts-inflected version of 'early Middle Pointed' English Gothic of around 1250, with simple bar tracery and cusped lancets. The design gains decorative richness from the variety of colours and materials, particularly banded voussoirs and chequerboard flushwork appearing in the gables, under the eaves, beneath the west window and elsewhere. There is considerable ornamental ironwork, including scrolly strapwork door-hinges and decorative box gutters and rainwater heads.

The west front is particularly richly treated. The four-light west window has spiky Geometric tracery and is flanked by tiers of gabled niches and chunky stepped buttresses of complex form. Beneath the window are foundation stones from 1840 and 1887. The gabled aisle to the left has two lancets and a cinquefoil. The north aisle wall features blind arcading between buttresses, framing three three-light windows and a north-west doorway beneath a triangular hood-mould.

The projecting south-west porch has a doorway of two shafted orders flanked by niches and diagonal buttresses; in the gable above are eight stepped brick lancets over bands of flint and limestone. The nave roof sweeps down low over the unbuttressed south aisle, which has two gabled half-dormers with triple lancets flanking a small quadruple lancet.

The transepts are slightly lower than the nave and project only a few feet beyond the aisles. The south transept has a triple-lancet window with a chequerboard tympanum. The north transept has two two-light windows flanking a half-octagonal stair turret.

The crossing tower is a massive angle-buttressed construction with blind arcading and a small bullseye window on each side. The east, north and south sides have prominent clock-faces. Above are bands of checkerboard and carved quatrefoils, then the sturdy broach spire with its tall hipped lucarnes.

The east end is mostly Street's work of 1860, despite alterations to the organ chamber and vestry in 1900 and 1907, and to the east window by Comper in 1935. The style is subtly different, High rather than Late Victorian, with sterner, more 'muscular' forms and harsher polychromy without flushwork. The chancel has two lancets to the south and a large traceried window to the east; the wiry bar tracery—three shallow-arched lights and a big octofoil—is Comper's, replacing Street's heavy plate tracery. The north chapel retains its original east window, comprising four uncusped lancets and a bullseye. To the right is the low vestry block. The rebuilt organ chamber to the south has its own gable with stone checker-work and thin lancets, replacing Street's original lean-to structure.

The interior of the nave is broad and low with wide aisles but no clerestorey. The walls are brick-faced with stone bands and dressings. The stone arcades have compound piers and diagonal abaci. The nave and north aisle have crown-post roofs with close-set rafters. The crossing arches spring from sturdy octagonal piers, with a triple opening over the nave arch and engaged shafts to the chancel arch.

From the north transept, a double archway with a cinquefoil roundel above opens into the side chapel. The chancel has a barrel roof, with the section over the altar divided off by a boldly cusped timber arch forming a ceiled canopy with moulded ribs and painted stencilling. A broad double archway with stone cusping and toothed brick surrounds, divided by a stubby marble column with an outsize foliated capital, opens into the side chapel.

The east wall is dominated by Street's built-in reredos. The central section is of coloured marble (red, pink, green and cream) and features an embossed Maltese cross framed by columns and a rich foliate cornice. The outer sections are of bold polychromatic tilework in red, black, white and green. To the right are a stone sedilia and piscina with trefoil-arched heads and slender marble shafts; to the left is an aumbry of similar character.

The stone font at the west end of the nave has a circular bowl with inset crosses resting upon four short marble columns. This and the arcaded stone pulpit by the chancel arch belong to Street's work of 1860. The nave pews, of unknown date, are simple open benches with Y-shaped ends. The aisles contain decorative electroliers bearing gilded monograms. The organ case, of 1907, projects into the south transept. The traceried chancel screen, of oak upon a stone base, dates from 1888; screens also separate the north transept from the chapel. Simple oak chancel stalls were installed in 1903; the altar furnishings are of similar character.

The west window (1899) is by Clayton and Bell and shows the Annunciation, Nativity, Presentation and Adoration of the Magi with Saints Peter, John, Stephen and Paul. Three of the north aisle windows—Dorcas and Martha (both 1902) and the Resurrection (1899)—are by the same firm, as are four small lancets in the south aisle showing the Agony in the Garden, Jesus and Veronica, the Entombment and Noli Me Tangere (all 1899). The south transept window (1888), showing the Risen Christ with the Virgin and Saint John, is by Burlison and Grylls, as are two south aisle windows: the Transfiguration (1896) and Simeon (1899). Another south aisle window, a Nativity with angels (1892), is by C E Kempe. The north transept contains two windows by Heaton, Butler and Bayne: the victory at Rephaim (1905) and the calling of Samuel (1912). The east window glass (1935), like the tracery, is by Ninian Comper and shows Christ in Glory with the Virgin and Saints Helena and Elizabeth of Hungary.

In the nave by the south-west door is a wall monument to Admiral Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (died 1891), a half-nephew of Queen Victoria who became a noted sculptor after a career in the Royal Navy. It bears a recumbent effigy in relief by the sculptor Feodora Gleichen, daughter of the deceased. Beneath the west window is a memorial plaque to Prince Victor's wife, Princess Laura of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (died 1912), with lettering, figures and foliage in flat relief.

In the north aisle is a wall monument to Captain Lionel West, killed in action in April 1915; a relief panel shows the dying soldier watched over by the Crucified Christ. In the sanctuary to the right of the altar is a brass memorial to the Reverend W C Raffles Flint (died 1884), who rebuilt the chancel in 1860 as a memorial to his uncle, Sir Stamford Raffles—a fact commemorated by a black-letter inscription on the wall opposite.