Church Of The Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity, Weare Giffard

This is a Grade I listed Anglican parish church, substantially built in the late 13th century with major 15th-century additions and extensive late 19th-century restoration. The building comprises a chancel, aisled choir and nave with south aisle, south chapel, and a west tower.

The exterior is built of coursed and dressed 15th-century slatestone rubble, with coursed slatestone rubble of 13th-century date to the north wall. The west tower is of rough ashlar, and the roof is late 19th-century slate with stone coping.

The chancel features a pointed chamfered arch over a late 19th-century three-light Perpendicular-style east window, and a 13th-century lancet window to the north wall. A late 19th-century vestry with stone chimneystack and Perpendicular-style windows adjoins the chancel. The south chapel has a 15th-century five-light Perpendicular east window with a moulded arched doorway featuring a 15th-century ribbed and studded door. The four-bay south wall of the nave contains two 15th-century three-light Perpendicular windows to the east and two similar windows restored in the 20th century to the west. The four-bay north wall has a 15th-century two-light window restored in the 20th century to the east and 15th-century three-light Perpendicular windows with intersecting arches to the tracery.

The 15th-century three-stage tower has offset diagonal buttresses, a pointed moulded-arched west doorway with a late 19th-century door, string courses and crenellated parapet. It features slit lights, an ogee-headed figure recess to the south, and hood moulds over two-light chamfered segmental-arched belfry windows.

The south porch, dating to the 15th century, has a moulded-arched outer doorway and casement-moulded architrave to the inner doorway, which retains its original 15th-century ribbed and studded door with clasping ring, plate and lock.

Interior: The chancel contains a chamfered pointed arched piscina, a late 19th-century pointed arched doorway to the vestry, and a late 19th-century Minton tile floor. The ceiling features 15th-century corbel heads supporting a late 15th-century four-bay king-post roof with coved and brattished cornice, mouchettes and quatrefoils in the spandrels, moulded purlins and intermediate rafters with carved pendentives. A 15th-century five-bay arcade separates the nave from the aisles. The south aisle and chapel are roofed with a late 15th-century wagon roof decorated with moulded ribs and floral bosses.

Fittings include late 19th-century choir stalls, benches and a Gothic-style pulpit. Several benches retain early 16th-century bench ends with richly carved Perpendicular tracery, coats of arms (including those of Bartholomew Fortescue, who became patron of the living in 1510), and iconography including the head of John the Baptist on a plate. An early 12th-century scalloped font sits on a late 19th-century base.

The north wall of the nave and choir displays mid-13th-century effigies of Sir Walter Giffard and his wife, which were removed to this location in the late 19th century from a pointed moulded arched recess where the altar now stands. The Fortescue Memorial, erected circa 1640 by Hugh Fortescue's son John, comprises a heraldic achievement set in a broken pediment flanked by Ionic columns, with kneeling figures of Hugh Fortescue (died 1600) and his wife Elizabeth (died 1630) facing each other in prayer. Below them are figures of their son John (died 1605) and his wife Maria (died 1637) kneeling in outward-facing prayer, flanked by relief portraits of their children in roundels and grandchildren in ovals. A chest tomb to Eleanor Fortescue (died 1857) is also present.

A late 15th-century wall painting over the priest's door in the south chapel depicts the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, shown flanked by two bowmen.

Stained glass includes memorial glass of circa 1870 in the chancel's east window and of 1902 in the nave. The heads and tracery lights of the east window of the south chapel retain fine medieval glass from a 15th-century Jesse window, including Fortescue arms. Fragments of 15th-century glass survive in the tracery of the aisle windows.