|
Holy Trinity church is designated
at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
-
It is a mid-Victorian
church Gothic Revival built in a late 13th-century style
church, designed two phases under two nationally-known
church architects, R C Hussey and Joseph Clarke.
-
Most of the fittings are
original to the C19 church and include some of good quality,
notably the reredos and flanking panels and the choir
stalls.
Details
MATERIALS: The church is built of Kentish ragstone with
limestone dressings and is roofed with slate.
PLAN: The plan consists of a nave with flanking aisles under
their own gables, a chancel, N transept, N and S porches and a S
tower.
EXTERIOR: It is a Gothic Revival church built in the style of
the late 13th century which was extremely popular for
church-building at the time it was erected. The defining
features are the Geometrical style windows used extensively
throughout the church. All the parts of the building are
separately articulated as current ecclesiological taste
dictated. The tower is very plain below and has paired, shafted
lancets for belfry windows. The design of the tower and its
parapet is such that a spire may have been intended to finish it
off.
INTERIOR: The walls are plastered and whitened. Between the
aisles and nave there are four-bay arcades with octagonal piers,
moulded capitals and bases and arches with roll-moulding on the
soffits. The chancel arch is double chamfered. Over the nave is
a hammerbeam roof with slender timber members and intermediate
arch-braced traces. The chancel has a simple close-coupled roof
with main trusses with a collar. The aisles have tie-beam roofs
with arch braces to a collar. There is a curious treatment at
the first pier from the E which consists of two responds of
unequal height mounted back-to-back. This type of feature might
be expected in a medieval church where it would indicate a
change of design between two building phases. Unlikely as it
might seem, that is probably what has happened here between the
two building campaigns of the 1860s and 1870s and is perhaps an
example of a deliberate attempt to introduce a feature which
suggests organic development of a kind that might be found in a
medieval church.
FIXTURES: Most of the fixtures are original to the Victorian
church. The font has an octagonal bowl with nodding ogee arches
and stiff-leaf decoration. It has a pyramidal cover with blind
tracery panels and which is mounted on a counter-weighted
system. The plain stone tub pulpit has a moulded cornice, a band
of text and a thick octagonal stem. The reredos has blind
tracery stone arches on marble shafts with good painted panels
of prophets etc (date and artist unknown). There is a series of
fine stalls with open traceried fronts and poppy-head ends. The
pews are of pine and have simple shaped ends of the rounded
shoulder type and many of them still retain their Victorian
numbering. Those to the W of the N and S entrances were cleared
away in 2009 to create a circulation space with refreshment
facilities etc. Stained glass includes a N chapel E window of
1901 signed by T F Curtis, Ward and Hughes: the E window is by
Ward and Hughes, 1896. The best features of the Victorian work
are the reredos with rather good paintings of Old Testament
prophets etc and the choir stalls which have elegant pierced
frontals and rather attenuated poppyhead bench ends.
HISTORY: The church was built to meet the need for increased
Anglican church accommodation in Sittingbourne in mid-Victorian
times. Although planned as a whole, it was built in two main
phases as was often the case in the 19th century due to
constraints on funding. The first parts built were the nave and
aisles in 1867 for which the architect was the London-based
Richard Charles Hussey (1806-87). Holy Trinity church was
designed by Richard Charles Hussey (1806-87). He was for a time
in partnership with Thomas Rickman who is famed for his
categorisation of the medieval styles of architecture which is
still used today. The Buildings of England CD-ROM lists just
over 50 works by him, almost exclusively churches or parsonages.
They cover a fairly wide geographical spread from Kent through
to the Midlands. Their date range is from 1839 to 1870 so it
seems likely that he spent the last 17 years of his life in
retirement which is why the second phase of the work at Holy
Trinity passed to Joseph Clarke who was extremely busy as a
church-builder in Kent.
The need to complete the building was driven by further
population expansion in the area. In the application for a grant
from the Incorporated Church Building Society in 1872 it was
noted that `At the time the [1871] Census was taken a great
depression in the Brick trade reduced the population of this
newly formed parish from 3000 to 2553. It has again nearly
reached the former number, and there is every prospect of a
further increase in population. The population with but a few
exceptions consists of the very poor'. Slight changes seem to
have taken place in the design between the two phases. The
architect for the second phase was Joseph Clarke (1819 or
20-1888), another London-based man whose practice was very
largely concerned with church-building and restoration. His
known works date from the middle of the 1840s until the time of
his death. He was diocesan surveyor to Canterbury and Rochester
and, from 1877, the newly-created diocese of St Albans. These
posts helped bring in numerous commissions in these three
dioceses but he also gained jobs over a much wider geographical
area and examples of his work can be found in most parts of
England. He was consultant architect to the Charity
Commissioners.
|