Holy Trinity Church

Holy Trinity Church

This memorial church is built in the early Decorated style from uncoursed, dressed limestone blocks on a slightly-battered plinth, with limestone dressings throughout. The steeply-pitched roofs are saddle-backed over the aisled nave and covered with original copper-coloured Westmoreland slates. The eaves overhang with kneelered gable parapets and overlapping copings topped by stone gable crosses.

A large gabled twin-arched bellcote sits at the eastern end of the nave gable, featuring tall trefoil-headed bell openings and cruciform carving to recessed oculi on both western and eastern faces, with a gable cross surmounting. The southern porch is gabled with a pointed-arched outer entrance and moulded label returned onto carved head stops. Geometric side lights comprise two conjoined cusped triangles with a quatrefoil oculus above. The heavily-moulded inner arch bears similar label stops and decorative ironwork to boarded doors. Two contemporary Gothic iron footscrapers flank the porch entrance.

Two-light tracery windows flank the porch, each with carved head stops to returned labels; the windows break the eaves and sit within elegant gables. A tall two-light western window has a tracery head with returned label in the same manner. Flanking buttresses define the nave and aisles, the latter with tall single lancets at the ends. Three further similarly-gabled windows light the northern aisle. A stepped-up southern door to the chancel has a pointed outer arch and trefoil inner arch, with boarded door and decorative ironwork. The entrance is sheltered beneath a coped, steeply-gabled canopy supported on double corbels, with a contemporary iron foot scraper beside it.

The large three-light eastern window displays Decorated tracery to the head and carved label stops. Stepped buttresses flank it—that to the left is angled, while that to the right is straight and marks the division between the chancel and the flush adjoining northern chapel. In the valley between the gables stands a fine two-stage chimney with broach-stopped chamfered edges and crenellated capping.

The northern chapel has a two-light eastern window with paired trefoil-headed lights and a surmounting quatrefoil oculus within a large blind pointed arch, its upper section carved with a cross. A tracery oculus sits in the western gable apex. Stepped buttresses are positioned at the northwest and northeast corners, the latter angled.

An early twentieth-century single-storey vestry adjoins the northern chapel. It is built in matching limestone on a battered plinth with a similar slate roof. A squat chimney with moulded capping tops the coped northern gable. The eastern face has a segmentally-arched boiler entrance at the left, and to the right are two squat two-light Tudor-arched leaded windows with cusped lights and depressed ogee to the moulded top, with a continuous label course. The western side has a stepped-up entrance to the right, with a moulded pointed arch and returned label; the boarded door bears decorative ironwork.

Interior

The tall nave is roofed with a fine clustered scissor-truss, carried on a stone-corbelled wall plate. A four-bay arcade with pointed limestone arches and moulded sandstone labels—bearing carved head stops—divides the nave from the aisles. The arcade columns are of polished Mona marble on moulded limestone bases, with naturalistic foliage carving to capitals, each representing different plants or leaves observed from nature. Engaged half-columns at the western and eastern ends feature similarly-carved capitals and corbel supports.

The flooring is of black and red quarry tiles. Original pitch pine pews have shaped and moulded pew-ends. The early English style font is carved from Llaniestyn red-stone—from the Marquis of Anglesey's quarry—combined with three different additional types of marble. A large basin sits on a moulded base with four columnar supports bearing naturalistic foliage capitals. The font stands on a tooled limestone plinth of cruciform plan with steps on all sides and a moulded top; a fine wrought iron frame supports a wooden font cover.

The square pulpit is of similar style and material to the font, with marble stepped access, engaged corner columns, moulded base and top, and a central quatrefoil bearing the Christological monogram. The aisles have simple roofs and similar pavements, with tall tracery windows breaking the eaves. Their gables are supported internally on fine foliated corbels. The southern entrance has a returned moulded label to its inner face with further carved heads as label stops.

Fine contemporary grisaille stained glass by James Powell and Sons fills the western window. Commemorative figurative stained glass windows light the aisles: those to the southern aisle and two to the northern aisle commemorate Townsend Mainwaring, JP, MP, of Galltfaenan Hall (died 1884) and include heraldic panels. The window at the eastern end of the northern aisle commemorates Whitehall Dod of Llannerch Hall (died 1878). Various nineteenth and twentieth-century wall brasses, chiefly to the Mainwaring family, are fixed throughout.

A fine chancel arch features engaged outer columns and inner half-columns with foliated capitals and corbels. The double-moulded pointed arch is of sandstone with complex vinescroll carving visible from both nave and chancel sides, with head carving to label stops. The chancel is stepped up and has a pointed waggon vault, compartmented with wooden moulded ribbing and Perpendicular-style gilded and polychromed shields and bosses. A brattished wall plate bears similar carved foliate bosses. The chancel has been stripped of plaster. An inlaid marble floor (in memory of W P Jones of Llannerch, 1955) covers the chancel, with similar paving in the stepped-up sanctuary.

Two further grisaille windows by Powell and Sons light the southern side. The large eastern window contains stained glass depicting the Passion and commemorates Col. John Lloyd Salusbury (died 1852) and his wife (died 1846); it is by William Wailes, signed with a monogram and dated 1854.

Fine oak choir stalls in Arts and Crafts Perpendicular style commemorate W C Jones of Llannerch Hall (1909), featuring blind and pierced tracery to bench ends and frontal carving. The sanctuary walls are panelled with fine re-used oak arcaded carvings with intricate wreathed heraldic shields, which were taken from Kinmel Park in 1936 and installed to commemorate W D Williams.

Simple contemporary oak altar rails with fielded posts and moulded rail complete the sanctuary. A Great War commemorative marble tablet to the northern wall is by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. A large pointed sandstone arch opens off the chancel to the northern chapel, with columns and detailing matching the nave, and decorative wrought-iron scroll-work screen within.

A narrow pierced Perpendicular oak screen separates the northern chapel from the northern aisle, also by G G Scott, in memory of R F Birch (died 1915), with a central panelled door. A fourteenth-century style parclose screen to the original vestry at the eastern end of the northern chapel has moulded and cusped tracery to the upper section and panelling below, with a central entrance.

Above stands the contemporary organ loft with a central organ in a Perpendicular case flanked by ogee-arched screen sections.