Holy Trinity Church, Trowbridge

Holy Trinity Church, Trowbridge, is a Grade II* listed 19th-century Church of England church in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, which had parish church status until 2011. It is commonly known in Trowbridge as ‘The Church on the Roundabout’, as it is encircled by a one-way traffic system.HistoryThe Trowbridge manor which included the land on which the church stands was bought in 1807 from the fifth Duke of Rutland, who retained the patronage. It had been noted that the existing parish church could barely hold a twelfth of the 12,000 population, and so plans were set in motion to build a new, larger church. In 1835 fund-raising appeals were begun by Francis Fulford, the then-rector of the parish church of St. James, with estimated construction costs of £4000.The total cost of the church was £5,251, towards which a grant of £1,676 was provided by the Church Building Commissioners. The building contractors for the church were Charles and Richard Gane.A. F. Livesay of Portsmouth was appointed as architect. Other works of his included the recently completed Holy Spirit Church, Newtown, on the Isle of Wight. Livesay’s design is in the Early English architectural style, and is based on elements of Salisbury Cathedral, including the vaulting and bosses of the north and south aisles in the Cathedral. The church was built of poor-quality Westwood stone, with the interior having iron and plaster columns (the plaster painted to mimic marble such as the Purbeck marble of Salisbury cathedral’s columns), and plaster scribed with false ashlar blocks to mimic high-quality stonework in the vaulting and walls. There were four porches, one of which (the south porch, the main entrance to the church nowadays) is situated under an embattled tower. The windows were originally plain, clear glass.