Church Of The Holy Trinity

The Church of the Holy Trinity is a substantial Victorian town church built in 1853-5 by Henry Woodyer. It stands in a walled churchyard with a lime avenue leading to the west porch.

Construction and Materials

The church is built of flint with freestone dressings and slate roofs. The flintwork incorporates what appears to be 12th-century arch-moulding and various moulded fragments of 13th- and 14th-century date, though documentary evidence suggests these may have been supplied by a manufactory rather than salvaged from earlier buildings. The roofs are timber-framed and covered externally with slates.

Plan

The building comprises a continuous seven-bay clerestoried nave with north and south lean-to aisles, and a chancel. A south-east vestry and west porch were added in 1894. There is no tower, but a timber-framed flèche with a copper-covered spire and lunettes stands at the junction between nave and chancel.

Exterior

The church is designed in the Decorated Gothic style. The north side features a buttressed aisle extending the full length of nave and chancel, with two-light Decorated-style windows. The clerestory has three-light windows with more elaborate tracery to the two chancel bays. A priest's door (now blocked) occupies the easternmost bay, with another doorway in the penultimate westernmost bay. The south side is similar but has a larger moulded doorway with shafts and bell capitals. The easternmost bay is occupied by a long two-phase vestry block built at right angles, with an axial stack, cusped lancets under decorative stone arches, and a five-light plate-traceried south window.

The east wall of the chancel has gabled buttresses and a large five-light window with geometric Decorated tracery, framed by a steep ashlar gable with blind tracery. The west end of the nave has a four-light geometric Decorated window above a deep two-bay 1890s porch with a covered west gable and square-headed windows with reticulated tracery, the western pair being blind.

Interior

The open roof is richly painted throughout and features elaborate two-tier roof trusses with arch-braced tie beams supporting a moulded braced post, with a plainer braced post above the collar. The roof has two tiers of purlins and windbraces. The chancel roof is boarded with moulded ribs and painted panels. An east end truss against the chancel wall has a slightly different design and frames east wall paintings with a central figure forming a series of transverse arches down each aisle. The roof-cladding of the two chapels is decorated in bordered oblongs containing various motifs and devices, including the sacred monogram IHS (Iesus Hominem Salvator).

In addition to the ceiling, some of the pillars and most of the walls were formerly decorated. The walls of the aisles were adorned with Joseph A Pippet's late 19th-century stations of the cross, noted by Pevsner. However, these were painted on dry plaster in the 1880s and deteriorated fairly rapidly until the early 1970s, when they were over-painted along with most of the wall paintings. Pippert's work has been replaced by a modern set of framed stations. The painting of Christ in Majesty, high above the high altar, escaped over-painting, though further down the east wall the paintings of Moses and Elias were obliterated. However, both are gradually re-appearing through the paint.

The arcades have octagonal piers with moulded capitals and arches with unusual detail above the capitals. During the 1880s the open timber chancel screen (surmounted by a cross only; the figures were added later), the octagonal timber pulpit with open traceried sides on a wineglass base on timber shafts, and the choir screens were erected. The aisle screens at the entrance to the chapels are more recent, the ornamentations being larger than those on the choir screens and less deeply carved. The chancel is paved in black and white whereas the nave has a woodblock floor. The sanctuary has a timber dado across the east wall with a memorial date of 1933. The choir stalls are low, with chamfered corners and a frieze of blind quatrefoils across the backs; the frontals are also decorated with a heavy frieze of blind tracery. The octagonal stone font, with boldly-carved sides featuring interlace and flamboyant motifs, also dates from the 1880s. It stands on an octagonal step, the sides carved with quatrefoils. There are two different types of nave benches, the earlier with deep concave profiles and chamfered tops.

Fittings and Glass

The stained glass is by Clayton and Bell and was installed in the late 1860s. It comprises a series of Old Testament themes on the north side (beginning with the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden at the west end) and a series of New Testament themes on the south side (including the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Sacred Heart Chapel and the Parable of the Publican and Sinner at the west end of the south wall). The glass contains much delicate detail and the colouring is of outstanding quality.

The Lady Chapel was re-ordered by Ninian Comper in the late 1940s using red hangings and frontal. The reredos is a Nativity with the Agnus Dei and the pelican, both emblems of sacrifice, in the medallions on either side. The candlesticks and candelabra are also by Comper. In the alcove, formerly a doorway, rests the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, and on the pillar opposite hangs an oil of the Madonna and child. The east window depicts, beneath the crucifix, the risen Christ making himself known to his fellow-travellers at supper, following the walk to Emmaus.

Within the church there are many interesting memorial tablets, pictures and statues, not least among these an unpainted stone statue of Our Lady and Child at the entrance to the Lady Chapel, and inside the west door a watercolour by A Ernest Monk (after Prosser) of Holy Trinity in 1860. The hanging copper light fittings are also of interest.

Historical Context

By the mid 19th century, the population of Winchester was growing rapidly, and Holy Trinity Church was the second church to be built in the city within ten years (the Grade II listed St Thomas's in Southgate Street, by EW Elmslie, dates from 1845-6). The new church was built on a plot named Whitebread Mead and was overlooked to the west by the building and grounds of the County Hospital in Parchment Street. Very soon, a row of terrace houses and the parish school would be erected and named after the church. Work on the site started in February 1852 and the church was consecrated in July 1854. The cost of the site was £900 and of the building £4500, raised by subscription. The church seated 900, 600 of which were free. The endowment of £333 6s 8d was paid by the first incumbent, the Reverend GA Seymour. The living was a perpetual curacy in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester of the value of £100 per annum.

Henry Woodyer (1815-96), the architect, having considerable private means, was a 'gentleman-architect' who based himself at Grafham, Surrey. He was a pupil of the great church architect William Butterfield and established a strong reputation himself for his church work. The greatest concentration of his work is in Surrey and the adjacent counties. His masterpiece is often considered to be Dorking parish church.