User:AnemoneProjectors/Holy Trinity Church, Stevenage

Holy Trinity Church is a Grade II listed church in Stevenage, a town in Hertfordshire, England. It was built in 1861 and extended in 1881.

History
The church was built in 1861, at the south end of the High Street in Stevenage. It was intended as a chapel-of-ease, to help the growing population at this end of Stevenage who would often find St Nicholas' Church full after a long walk there. Canon Blomfield was rector of St Nicholas, and his brother Charles Blomfield, Bishop of London, was lord of the manor, and gave the site to be built on. The church was built on the site of a pond, which was filled in with rubble.

The building was designed by architect Sir Arthur Blomfield, Bishop Blomfield's son. It was built by the Stevenage firm of Warren and Bates at a cost of £1,416. It was consecrated by the Bishop of Rochester on 23 April 1862. It seated 225 people. In the 1977 The Buildings of England, Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry described the church as "an early church of [Arthur Blomfield's], before his style became smooth and competent and stale."

When the church opened, it was almost immediately too small for its congregation, so in 1880, the rector William Jowitt appealed for aid to enlarge it. The extension was built in 1881, supported by wealthy families, including the Barclays of Whitney Wood, Stevenage. The extension consisted of a new nave and south porch, and the church reopened for services in April 1881. The extension cost £1,850. When Dr Andrew Whyte Barclay died in 1884, his widow undertook to build a new chancel in the church in his memory. It was completed in 1885, and was consecrated on 30 November 1885 by the Lord Bishop of St Albans. The architects of the new nave and chancel were Tate and Popplewell of Manchester and it was built by Warren and Bates. It is not known why Tate and Popplewell were chosen instead of Blomfield, but Blomfield was consulted and he approved after meeting with Tate.

The interior of the church includes red brick walls, tiled floors, and choir stalls, fittings and an altar rail made from English oak wood. There is an altar rail of wrought iron. Mrs Barclay also gave a stained glass window to the church, found at the east end of the building. It consists of five lights, and was designed and made by Heaton, Butler and Bayne of London. It represents "The Ascension of our Lord", "Calling of St Andrew", "The Loaves and Fishes", "Christ the Physician and Healer", "Raising of Jairus' Daughter" and "The Miraculous Drought of Fishes", and includes an inscription at its base to Dr Barclay. There is a reredos of Ancaster stone which forms an arcade. An organ was erected in the church in 1896. A clock on the exterior of the building was given by parishioners in memory of Canon Blomfield.

Stevenage was designated the first new town in 1946. Those concerned with the new town realised that new centres for people to meet were needed to create a sense of community, so several new churches were to be built. In 1955, the Reverend Eric Cordingly became rector of Stevenage and led the development and reorganisation of the Church of England in Stevenage. Each neighbourhood of the town would have its own church building and priest-in-charge, and there would be one large, centrally-located church as the parish church for the town, St George's (later St Andrew and St George's), to which the title of rector would be attached. After it was consecrated in 1960, St George's took over from St Nicholas' as the civic church of the town. St Nicholas' and its daughter church, the Holy Trinity, became daughter churches of St George's. In 1970, the parish of Stevenage was divided into seven separate parishes, and the Holy Trinity became a parish church in its own right for the first time. Christ the King, built in 1982 and located in the Symonds Green neighbourhood, is also in the parish of Holy Trinity Stevenage.

The church was designated Grade II listed status on 30 September 1976, for the reasons: "It is a vigorous High Victorian church by a well-known church architect and which was extended in a sympathetic style in the 1880s" and "It contains a number of fixtures of interest". In the 1970s, the original organ was replaced by one from the redundant church at Woodhill, near Hatfield. The original 1861 part of the church now acts as a parish room. It was refurbished in 2006.