Chapel Of St Martin

The Chapel of St Martin, located on Midford Road in Odd Down, was originally known as the Church of the Holy Trinity. It was built in 1846 as a chapel for a former Union Workhouse, designed by G.P. Manners and constructed by John Plass.

The chapel is a five-bay single-cell building in the Early English style, featuring a steeply pitched slate roof and limestone ashlar exterior. It incorporates a bell-cote, a deep west porch with plank doors set in a double-chamfered arch and buttresses, and a small south porch or vestry. The west gable features a bellcote. Deep two-stage buttresses, set back at corners with weathered offsets and gabled tops, are complemented by octagonal corner pinnacles. Lancet windows are set to deep splay, with a sill band and a moulded drip course. The east end has a triple stepped lancet under a small quatrefoil light. The building has a deep frieze band of continuous dentils, stepped with gables. The vestry features a small, studded plank door and a lancet window.

Inside, the chapel’s ashlar walls are unplastered. It has a five-bay nave with queen-post roof trusses and three ranges of wind bracing. Lancet windows have simple splays. A small plank door leads to a confessional (formerly a vestry) and a full-width gallery with a painted panelled front rests on two cast iron columns, featuring a sloping plastered soffit. A narrow, unadorned passageway is accessible via plank doors from the lobby. The floor is made of plain wood strip; the chancel is raised on three steps, and the sanctuary on two, both carpeted. Fittings include a low octagonal wooden pulpit, a small octagonal stone font, benches, and an altar made of fine carved oak. Decalogue boards adorn the walls, alongside various monumental plaques.

A tablet commemorates the laying of the "First stone" by Tristram Whitter, under the auspices of G.W. Blathwayt, noting that the chapel was “as far as practicable…built by inmates of the Union Workhouse, for whose spiritual benefit it was designed.” Another tablet remembers John Plass, an inmate who laid all the stone and died aged 82 in 1849. The chapel's bold Early English detailing and finishes are possibly intended to accommodate relatively unskilled labour. The construction of such a prominent chapel within the workhouse reflects the rising influence of the High Church party and their desire to create a strong religious presence within an otherwise Utilitarian institution.