White Ensign Club

WHITE ENSIGN CLUB

The White Ensign Club, formerly Holy Trinity Church, occupies a prominent position on the north-east side of South Street in Exeter. The church was built in 1819–1820 by the local architectural and building firm Robert Cornish & Son, replacing a medieval church that stood on the same site just inside the South Gate on the city wall.

Construction and Materials

The building is constructed of stuccoed brick with stone dressings and a lead-covered belfry. The roof is concealed behind a parapet.

Plan and Exterior

The building is rectangular in plan with a shallow single-storey projecting square east end and a shallow single-storey projecting square entrance porch to the west. The exterior presents a rectangular preaching box with a screen-like west front. Above the arcaded parapet of the screen sits a single arched window, now blocked. The battlemented parapet rises between heavy crocketed corner pinnacles, and a battlemented gable end incorporates a clock. The belfry takes the form of an octagonal lantern. The side elevations feature four arched windows per side, set between buttresses. Each window comprises three-light tracery in two orders, rising to a sexfoil. The east end is very plain. A number of small twentieth-century single-storey service extensions have been added to the rear.

Interior

The interior has been extensively subdivided with modern partition walls to accommodate use as a social club. A modern suspended floor occupies the area of the original choir gallery at the west end, accessed by a modern staircase. A suspended ceiling has been inserted over the remainder of the chancel and nave. The arcade consists of four bays with slender quatrefoil piers. The lower parts and high bases of these piers and the east and west responds of the aisles remain visible, whilst the upper parts of the nave and chancel survive above the inserted ceiling, including the four-centred arches and elegant fluted capitals of the arcade. No ecclesiastical fittings survive apart from some windows. The windows are largely plain glass with detailed decorative leading and strong coloured margin glazing. The window transoms are banded with blind moulding decoration in the interior. The north aisle retains a later nineteenth-century stained glass window depicting the nativity.

Historical Context

Holy Trinity Church originated in the medieval period and stood on the main medieval thoroughfare from London and the east to Exeter, just inside the South Gate on the city wall. Both the gate and the church were demolished in 1819 during civic improvements. The church was completely rebuilt at a cost of over £7,000 and could accommodate around 1,000 people. Robert Cornish (c.1760–1844) was a long-serving surveyor to Exeter Cathedral from 1800 to 1838, and his son Robert Stribling Cornish (1788–1871) rose to become Mayor of Exeter in 1852–53. Papers relating to Holy Trinity dated 1819 held by the Incorporated Church Building Society refer to them as 'Architects and builders'. The Cornishes also designed St Edmund's Church, Exeter, in 1834.

The chancel of Holy Trinity was subsequently altered in 1884 by Edward Ashworth, when the pews were replaced and other fittings installed. South Gate suffered badly during the Second World War Blitz, but the church and much of its stained glass survived. Having fallen into disrepair, the building was converted in 1977 into an armed forces social club, involving the lateral sub-division of the nave.