Description

TORQUAY

SX9263 MEADFOOT ROAD 885-1/18/160 (North side) 10/01/75 Breakaway Sports Centre (Formerly Listed as: TORWOOD GARDENS ROAD Church of the Holy Trinity)

GV II

Parish church, redundant and now in use as sports centre. 1894 by Watson and Watson on the site of an earlier chapel. Snecked local grey limestone rubble with sandstone dressings; slate roof, ornamental ridge tiles. Late example of Early English/Decorated Revival. PLAN: Nave; apsidal chancel; north and south aisles; north and south transepts; north porch into transept; chapel and vestry off chancel; north west tower. The conversion has involved walling off the aisles and inserting a floor in the nave with steps up from the former chancel. EXTERIOR: 3-sided apse with 2-light Decorated traceried windows. Transept windows 4-light and transomed, transepts with angle buttresses. Porch on west wall of north transept with a moulded 2-centred doorway with nook shafts. 5-bay aisles have lean-to roofs; bays divided by buttresses with set-offs; clerestory bays divided by pilasters. Triple lancets to aisles; lancets to clerestory. 3-light Decorated traceried window in west end of south aisle. 7-light west window with Geometric Decorated tracery. 3-stage tower with angle buttresses and a 3-sided stair turret on the east side; tall stone spire supported by flying buttresses. Tower has a richly moulded 2-centred arched west doorway and pairs of large lancets to the other faces. Frieze of blind trefoil-headed arcading to bottom stage. Belfry stage has big paired louvred lancet openings and Y tracery. Trefoil-headed arcade forms parapet. Octagonal corner pinnacles to angle and flying buttresses have blind trefoil-headed arcade and conical spire. 2-light lucarnes with Y tracery to 4 sides of spire. INTERIOR: 5-bay aisles have octagonal piers with stiff-leaf carved capitals. Nave open roof survives in first-floor gymnasium: arched braced on stiff-leaf carved corbels. Chancel polychromy, including stencilled wall decoration and the painted roof survives from the level of the springing of the window arches. Good stained glass intact: 3 east windows by Drake; excellent west window of 1907 designed by Maurice Drake and executed by Drake and Son (Devon Nineteenth-Century Churches Project). A very late example of Early English revival. The spire is an important element in the townscape. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1952-1989: P.848; Brooks C: Devon Nineteenth Century Churches Project Archive).

Listing NGR: SX9215863451

External Links

• Wikidata Q26502003

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