Church Of The Holy Trinity

Church of the Holy Trinity

This parish church is an important example of medieval and 19th-century ecclesiastical architecture. The 14th-century tower and transepts survive from the original building. The remainder was rebuilt in 1842 by Thomas Foster of Bristol in Perpendicular Gothic style, while the chancel was altered between 1869 and 1871 by William Burges. A porch room was added by Peter Falconer in 1973. The building is constructed of ashlar and random rubble limestone with stone and Welsh slate roofs.

The church comprises a nave with aisles, north and south transepts, a central tower and chancel, with a west entrance lobby addition and parish room.

The 14th-century tower is particularly fine, featuring tall deeply splayed two-light pointed belfry openings with Decorated tracery. The broach spire has narrow lucarnes to the cardinal faces, though the upper part was removed in 1563 and replaced with a crenellated coronet with crocketed pinnacles. An octagonal north-east stair turret is entered by a pointed arched doorway in the angle between the chancel and north transept.

The south transept is notably impressive, with a large five-light rose window, diagonal corner buttresses and a row of closely-spaced side wall buttresses with two-light pointed windows between them. The plainer north transept has three-light north and similar east windows with reticulated tracery, with a circular 19th-century restored window above featuring quatrefoil tracery. A moulded pointed arched doorway on the east side has a hoodmould.

The chancel, altered by Burges, is buttressed and features a large five-light east window with geometrical tracery and double tracery in Burges's characteristically bold style, above which is an empty hooded image niche. The 19th-century nave by Foster, in Perpendicular style, includes five Perpendicular aisle windows and one bay at the west end with a smaller window. Two-light clerestory windows with four-centred pointed heads are separated by gabled buttresses. Crenellated parapets with tall crocketed pinnacles crown the west end above angle buttresses. A four-light Perpendicular west window illuminates the entrance. A flat-roofed lobby now obscures the west doorway and links to a hexagonal church room with a sprocketed pyramidal roof, ball finial and stone cross windows.

The interior is distinguished by a broad nave with a panelled roof featuring gilt bosses and painted decoration to the ribbing. Four-bay arcades have octagonal columns, and the 14th-century crossing arches die into responds of piers. Tierceron vaulting beneath the tower springs from slender corner shafts with foliage capitals, and some medieval painting survives on the nave arch. The chancel has a timber boarded barrel vault with painted decoration added in 1931 by F.C. Eden, and a highly polished encaustic tile stepped floor.

The most remarkable interior feature is the south transept, dominated by its rose window and a pitched stone slab roof supported on stone cross-arches with scissor bracing set closely together in relation to the external buttressing. Two ogee-arched Decorated mortuary tomb recesses below the south transept window display rich crocket decoration and pinnacles, and retain effigies of a Knight in contemporary armour and his Lady, each mounted on a chest with quatrefoil front panelling. A similar tomb recess in the north transept is now obscured by the organ.

The church contains many fine memorials, including brasses at the west end of the nave. A notable segmental pedimented memorial in the south transept commemorates Ieremie Bucke, a Parliamentary officer. Below it is an undated oval brass plate to Jacobus Bradley, S.T.P., died 1762 aged 70, with a Latin inscription; this plate was formerly attached to Bradley's monument in the churchyard. Several fine monuments are reset high in the nave between the clerestory windows, many of cadaver type and mostly commemorating the Sheppard family of Gatcombe Park. Particularly fine is a monument on the south side by Ricketts of Gloucester to Samuel Sheppard, died 1770. The boldest monument on the north side is a pedimented plaque to Joseph Iles, died 1749, by Robert Chambers.

Most remaining fittings date from the re-seating of the church in 1875. A timber rood screen by F.C. Eden of 1920 was intended to be painted. The stained glass is very complete: the east window and south rose window are by Hardman. The west window and most aisle windows are by Herbert Bryans, a pupil of Kempe, installed between 1899 and 1922. One window in the north aisle is by Edward Payne.

The church at Minchinhampton was originally given by William the Conqueror to the Abbaye aux Dames, Caen, and passed to the nuns of Syon Abbey in 1415. A major rebuilding occurred in the 12th century, but no trace of this survives.