Church Of Holy Trinity, Attached Walls And Railings

Church of Holy Trinity, Gawcott

Church, built in 1827 by the incumbent, Reverend Thomas Scott, at a cost of £1,526. The building was restored and altered in 1894 by John Oldrid Scott and again in the 20th century. It is constructed of coursed squared limestone with ashlar dressings, featuring a slate roof to the body of the church and lead roofs to the tower and apse.

The church has a polygonal apse, a wide aisleless nave, and a small west tower. The exterior displays a Classical style. The apse is lower than the nave with a blank east wall, windows to the canted sides, and quoins to the angles. Windows throughout have round-arched heads with plain raised ashlar surrounds and key blocks, narrow projecting sills, and small leaded panes. The three-bay nave has similar windows and rusticated quoins. The west end features six-paned double-leaf doors on either side of the tower, with plain raised stone surrounds and low pediments on console brackets. Above these doors are shorter windows matching the rest of the church. The front is surmounted by half pediments flanking the tower.

The tower comprises three stages with a west window similar to those of the nave. The middle stage has blank circles to the north, south, and west sides with plain raised stone surrounds. The short top stage contains a clock face on the west side. The tower has rusticated quoins, hollow-chamfered string courses, a moulded cornice, and a plain stone-coped ashlar parapet with piers at the angles bearing ball finials. The church has a chamfered ashlar plinth to the west end and tower, a hollow-chamfered cornice, pediment gables, and plain stone-coped parapets.

The interior features a chancel arch with an elliptical-arched head, key block, and imposts. The nave and apse have flat plaster ceilings with later applied thin timber ribs. The nave ceiling contains four circular ventilators with ornamental cast-iron vents. The original communion rail, shifted forward from the entrance to the apse, has symmetrical turned balusters. An early 19th-century hexagonal pulpit with panel mouldings to the sides is present. Original seating is arranged in two blocks with panelled woodwork. A late 18th or early 19th-century chamber organ with an added pedal board remains in the church. A pair of tall round arch-headed boards, moved from the east to the west wall, frame the Lord's Prayer and Creed on one board and the Ten Commandments on the other.

Two wall monuments are notable. A white marble monument on a slate ground commemorates John West, a parish benefactor who died in 1814 and who paid for the previous chapel. The monument was erected by his trustees and is signed by Harrison of Buckingham. A second veined marble wall monument, also signed Harrison, commemorates Reverend Thomas Scott (1780–1835), described in the inscription as the son of the late Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford, and the first incumbent of this chapelry. The inscription records 27 years of service and notes that he built the present church on the site of the former chapel, which had fallen to decay, with assistance from friends but at considerable personal expense. Thomas Scott was the father of the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, who was born in Gawcott. Scott was subsequently appointed rector of Wappenham, Northamptonshire.

Attached subsidiary features include walls approximately one metre high curving forward from the west angles of the nave to frame a shallow forecourt. These walls are punctuated by gateways to the north and south sides of the churchyard, with 20th-century iron gates. The wall to the south returns to enclose the south side of the churchyard and is constructed of coursed limestone rubble with brick coping. A length of iron railing with acorn finials to the standards joins the wall to the apse at the east end of the churchyard.

The present building replaces a chapel built in 1806 at the expense of John West. The top stage of the tower was lowered in 1967, eliminating a bell-chamber window.