Description

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FAREHAM
WEST STREET (south side)
Church of the Holy Trinity

29-MAR-06

II*
Gothick town church of 1834-37, the north side parallel to the main street through Fareham. First phase attributed by Pevsner to Jacob Owen, chancel rebuilt in 1915; decoration by Dykes Bower.

MATERIALS: cream brick laid Flemish bond; slate roofs; some red brick to chancel on south side marks site of proposed but unbuilt chapel.

EXTERIOR: Chancel, seven-bay nave with west end gallery and north porch; north west tower; north east vestry. Nave with plain parapet, divided into narrow bays by tall buttresses with set-offs. Tall two-light Gothick transomed windows cusped Y-tracery and brattished transoms. Four-stage embattled tower with angle buttresses with gabled set-offs and narrow north doorway with quadruple chamfers and a Gothick door. Tall, narrow tower windows, the belfry windows paired, clock faces on all four faces. Low hipped slate roof to tower.

Two-storey porch with double chamfered four-centred doorway, the parapet raised in the centre for date plaque of 1834. The west end of the nave has a triple window lighting the gallery, a two-light segmental-headed window below and a cusped roundel in the gable, which has a plain parapet. The south side is linked, via an original stair block to the gallery (matching the north side porch), to a late C20 parish rooms/office complex which is not of special interest. High-set five-light east window in the rebuilt chancel.

INTERIOR: seven-bay arcades with cast-iron quatrefoil section piers with bell capitals supporting depressed segmental arches. Flat aisle and higher nave roofs, panelled between transverse cast iron arches on shafts on moulded corbels, with a cornice of fleurons. The nave roof shafts are a continuation of the pier profile. The spandrels of the nave arches are traceried and there are large decorative ventilator panels in the ceiling. West end gallery with a blind Gothick traceried frontal. The north and south ends of the gallery each break forward into the aisles by one raking bay. Attractive painted decoration of blue, white and gold by Dykes Bower. Simple segmental-headed chancel arch and pretty c.1920s chancel screen with large openings and simplified tracery of naturalistic carved decoration with carved angels in the spandrels. Chancel ceiling of boards on the west/east axis with decorative pierced holes for ventilation and a moulded cornice. The chancel has a triple sedilia with cusped arches and a hoodmould. Victorian nave benches, the ends with chamfered corners, sunk trefoils and convex shoulders. Gallery staircases with stick balusters and ramped handrails. Open-backed gallery benches may be 1830s. Font with octagonal stone bowl with Gothic lettered inscription on octagonal stem.

Numerous wall monuments include Admiral Thompson, d.1799, executed by Flaxman in 1800 including a figure with a sextant; a handsome memorial to Elizabeth Stephens, d.1837, by Flaxman, executed by Thomas Denman, and a graceful tablet to Sophia Dickson, b. 1846, signed by E.H Bailey. Heavily-repaired but striking painted glass in the west window (formerly in the east window) by Thomas Jervais of Windsor, c1770-1790, given to the church in 1835 when it was restored by J.A Edwards, who added heraldic and other patterns to the head tracery.

HISTORY: this church is one of the early C19 Commissioners' churches. Jacob Owen was an architect and engineer who transferred from Portsmouth to the Irish Board of Works in 1832. Dykes Bowers who worked on the decorative scheme was a prominent C20 church architect, whose work includes the new high altar of St Paul's Cathedral and works to a large number of parish churches.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: an outstanding example of an 1830s Gothick church with an elegant tower and graceful interior. The rebuilt 1915 chancel is sympathetic to the 1830s work and the decorative scheme by Dykes Bower adds to the delicacy of the interior. The interior has good fittings, including some fine wall monuments of the early C19, and an important painted glass window by Jervais of Windsor.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533856

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Huddersfield in 50 Buildings
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)