Church Of The Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity, Markbeech

A picturesque early Victorian church completed in 1852 to designs by the architect David Brandon. It was founded and begun by the Honourable John Chetwynd Talbot and completed in fulfilment of his intentions by his widow. The building formed part of a general movement to provide places of worship for west Kent hamlets which had previously lacked them.

The church is constructed of local, rock-faced semi-coursed sandstone with red clay tile roofs. It comprises a nave, chancel with three-sided apse, south porch, north-west steeple with organ chamber and vestry, and a south-east vestry.

The design is in the Early English Gothic style. Windows throughout are almost exclusively lancets—uncusped in the nave and with cusping in the chancel. The east window consists of three graded lancets. At the west end are two tall lancets with a sexfoil light above and between them. The south porch is of timber with a low stone plinth and shelters the main doorway, above which is an incised inscription recording the church's founding.

On the north side of the chancel stands a low tower of two stages with angle buttresses to the lower stages and pairs of lancet belfry windows in the upper stage. The north face of the ground floor has a two-light plate tracery window. The tower is topped with a shingled chamfer spire.

Internally, the walls are of bare ashlar. The east window features detached shafts between the lights and an absence of intervening masonry between the lights, creating an impressive three-dimensional effect. The nave roof has very plain, rather spindly scissor-braced trusses. The chancel roof has square panels with ribs converging to a central point at the east end.

Much original 19th-century work survives. The pewing is of pine with square ends to the seats. The pulpit is of stone, polygonal in form, with each solid face decorated with blind tracery, and is accessed via an opening in the wall from the chancel. The font has a circular bowl with a trail of foliage encircling it; the stem is of quatrefoil section with small heads at the top of each valley between the lobes. The east window is by William Wailes. The reredos at the east end consists of a row of five square panels decorated with instruments of the Passion. The roof of the chancel is painted blue and includes swirling figures of angels, the work carried out in 1958 when decoration by G F Bodley was destroyed.

David Brandon, who designed this church, was a well-known Victorian church architect (1813–97). He was articled to George Smith from 1828 to 1883 and became partner of the prolific architect T H Wyatt between 1838 and 1851, after which he practised alone. Holy Trinity Church is among his first solo commissions.