Reasons for Designation
Holy Trinity Church is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is an attractive and well-preserved parish church of 1851, built in anticipation of Bracknell's rapid growth in the mid-C19.
* It contains a suite of good early C20 fittings, as well as a number of stained-glass windows by leading designers.
Details
BRACKNELL
674-1/0/10011 THE RING
04-DEC-09 Holy Trinity Church, lychgate and sect
ion of boundary wall
II
Parish church, 1850-1 by HE Coe and EW Goodwin of Sydenham, extended c1860 by Coe.
MATERIALS: Knapped flint with limestone dressings and banding; Welsh slate roof and shingled spire.
PLAN: Three-bay nave, narrow north aisle with entrance porch, broad south aisle with transept, north-east tower with vestry, chancel and south chapel.
EXTERIOR: Twin-gabled west front with triple lancets and small quatrefoil window to nave, circular window of four quatrefoils in south aisle gable with two smaller lancets below, and single lancet to narrower north aisle; stepped buttresses topped with gablets. South elevation has paired lancets to aisle and single lancets to lower transept. Lady chapel has diagonal buttress and two-light traceried east window. Chancel has large traceried east window, trefoil-headed north and south windows, and angle buttresses. Tower has broad arched doorway (originally the main entrance) to north wall, louvred belfry openings to upper stage, and splay-foot broach spire; small flat-roofed vestry projects to east. North aisle has paired lancets.
INTERIOR: Plastered and whitewashed, with splayed window reveals, those in the south aisle and chancel having their irregular quoins left exposed. North nave arcade with double-chamfered arches and octagonal piers; south arcade similar but with carved foliate capitals. Simpler unmoulded arch to south transept. Chancel arch with hood-mould, supported on squat half-columns and carved corbels. Richly-carved sedilia in north chancel wall: two cusped arches with crocket capitals on red marble colonettes. East window reveal has two orders of mouldings with colonettes, and hood-mould with stops in the form of carved heads. Scissor-braced roofs with false hammer-beams to nave and south aisle; arch-braced roof to chancel with boarded ceiling. Vestry has flat panelled ceiling.
FIXTURES AND FITTINGS: Nave pews with linenfold end panels, of oak, 1910; choir and clergy stalls of same date and material, with linenfold and tracery carving. Font in north aisle, 1851, with later pyramidal oak cover and linenfold panelling to baptistery area. Pulpit, of oak with stone base and wrought-iron panels, 1891. War memorial panelling to south chapel, c1918. Carved, gilded and painted organ case in chancel, 1910. High altar, oak, with carved and gilded angel supporters and painted and gilded panels, on marble steps with encaustic tiles, early/mid C20. Blind tracery panelling to chancel walls, with some vestiges of earlier painted decoration.
STAINED GLASS:
East window: Crucifixion (1888) by Burlison and Grylls.
Lady chapel: Annunciation (1913) and Presentation (1899), by Burlison and Grylls; Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ (1920), by Herbert Bryans.
South transept: St Theodore (1919), by Christopher Whall; St Birinus (1939), by James Ballantine.
South aisle: St Stephen and St Lawrence (1892), by Burlison and Grylls; St Theodore and (possibly) St Birinus (1892), by Burlison and Grylls.
North aisle: Christ and children (1906), by Christopher Whall; St Martin and St George (1900), by Christopher Whall; St Oswald and St Edmund (1916), by James Powell & Sons.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Section of original boundary wall to west of churchyard, facing The Ring: red brick with flint panels and stone copings. Lychgate to north-west of church: constructed of heavy oak beams resting upon brick and stone dwarf walls, with timber traceried side panels and a hipped tiled roof with sprocketed eaves; moved to its present location during the 1970s.
HISTORY: Bracknell, a tiny hamlet before the C19, had by 1850 developed into a sizeable village, and was expected to expand yet further with the projected opening of a station on the Staines and Wokingham Railway. In anticipation of this, a new parish church was built in the High Street to supplement the ancient churches of Binfield, Winkfield, Warfield and Easthampstead, all some miles away. The church, consisting of nave, north aisle, south transept, tower and chancel, was designed by the architects HE Coe and EW Goodwin of Sydenham, and was consecrated in 1851. Around 1860, the church was extended by the addition of a broad south aisle, south chapel and north porch, with Coe again as the architect. Later still, a small vestry was built onto the base of the tower. Subsequent changes were restricted to the installation of fixtures and fittings: the present seating and organ were installed in 1910, and a number of stained glass windows by various designers were introduced as individual memorials and bequests.
In 1949 Bracknell was designated as one of the ten New Towns mandated by the New Towns Act of 1946, and over the ensuing decades almost all of the older settlement was demolished by the Bracknell Development Corporation to make way for a pedestrianised town centre surrounded by an inner ring road. The church, now cut off from the shopping area by the ring road, was one of the few older buildings to survive.
Henry Edward Coe (1826-1885) trained in the offices of George Gilbert Scott and GE Street before setting up in practice with EW Goodwin in 1849. Holy Trinity Church was one of their first commissions; others included the Dundee Royal Infirmary (1852, Category A) and Christ Church in Redcar, North Yorkshire (1854, Grade II). Coe entered into partnership with several other architects in the course of his career. With HH Hofland he won the initial competition for the Foreign Office in 1856, only to be edged out two years later by his former master GG Scott, and with Frederick Peck he designed the Agricultural Hall at Islington in 1862 (now the Business Design Centre, Grade II). In 1885, the year of his death, the National Agricultural Hall in West Kensington (now part of the Kensington Olympia, Grade II) was built to his designs.
SOURCES: Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Berkshire (1966), p.93.
Dictionary of Scottish Architects, at www.scottisharchitects.org.uk, accessed on June 23 2009.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Holy Trinity Church is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is an attractive and well-preserved parish church of 1851, built in anticipation of the rapid growth of Bracknell during the mid-C19.
* It contains a suite of good early-C20 fittings, as well as a number of stained-glass windows by leading designers.
This List entry has been amended to add the source for War Memorials Register. This source was not used in the compilation of this List entry but is added here as a guide for further reading, 16 August 2017.
