Church of the Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity

This Gothick town church stands on the south side of West Street in Fareham, with its north side running parallel to the main street. Built between 1834 and 1837, it is one of the early 19th-century Commissioners' churches. The first phase is attributed by Pevsner to Jacob Owen, an architect and engineer who transferred from Portsmouth to the Irish Board of Works in 1832. The chancel was rebuilt in 1915 with decoration by Dykes Bower, a prominent 20th-century church architect known for work including the new high altar of St Paul's Cathedral and numerous parish churches.

The church is constructed of cream brick laid in Flemish bond with slate roofs. Red brick to the chancel on the south side marks the site of a proposed but unbuilt chapel.

The plan comprises a chancel, a seven-bay nave with a west end gallery and north porch, a north-west tower, and a north-east vestry. The nave has a plain parapet divided into narrow bays by tall buttresses with set-offs. Tall two-light Gothick transomed windows with cusped Y-tracery and brattished transoms light the bays. The four-stage embattled tower has angle buttresses with gabled set-offs and a narrow north doorway with quadruple chamfers and a Gothick door. Tall, narrow tower windows are fitted with paired belfry windows and clock faces on all four faces, beneath a low hipped slate roof.

The two-storey porch has a double chamfered four-centred doorway, with the parapet raised in the centre for a date plaque of 1834. The west end of the nave is lit by a triple window lighting the gallery, a two-light segmental-headed window below, and a cusped roundel in the gable, which has a plain parapet. The south side is linked via an original stair block to the gallery (matching the north side porch) to a late 20th-century parish rooms and office complex. A high-set five-light east window lights the rebuilt chancel.

The interior features seven-bay arcades with cast-iron quatrefoil section piers with bell capitals supporting depressed segmental arches. Flat aisle roofs and a higher nave roof are panelled between transverse cast-iron arches on shafts mounted on moulded corbels, with a cornice of fleurons. The nave roof shafts are a continuation of the pier profile. The spandrels of the nave arches are traceried with large decorative ventilator panels in the ceiling. The west end gallery has a blind Gothick traceried frontal. The north and south ends of the gallery each break forward into the aisles by one raking bay. The interior carries attractive painted decoration in blue, white and gold by Dykes Bower.

A simple segmental-headed chancel arch frames a pretty circa 1920s chancel screen with large openings and simplified tracery featuring naturalistic carved decoration with carved angels in the spandrels. The chancel ceiling is boarded on the west/east axis with decorative pierced holes for ventilation and a moulded cornice. A triple sedilia with cusped arches and a hoodmould is set in the chancel. Victorian nave benches have chamfered corners, sunk trefoils and convex shoulders. Gallery staircases feature stick balusters and ramped handrails. Open-backed gallery benches may date from the 1830s. An octagonal stone font with a Gothic lettered inscription is mounted on an octagonal stem.

Numerous wall monuments include Admiral Thompson (died 1799), executed by Flaxman in 1800 and showing a figure with a sextant; a handsome memorial to Elizabeth Stephens (died 1837) by Flaxman, executed by Thomas Denman; and a graceful tablet to Sophia Dickson (born 1846) signed by E.H. Bailey. The west window contains heavily-repaired but striking painted glass by Thomas Jervais of Windsor, dating from approximately 1770 to 1790. The glass was given to the church in 1835 when it was restored by J.A. Edwards, who added heraldic and other patterns to the head tracery. The window was formerly in the east window.

This church represents an outstanding example of a 1830s Gothick church with an elegant tower and graceful interior. The sympathetically rebuilt 1915 chancel complements the 1830s work, and the decorative scheme by Dykes Bower adds to the delicacy of the interior. The interior contains good fittings, including fine early 19th-century wall monuments and an important painted glass window by Jervais of Windsor.