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We
live in an age when people are often anxious to
preserve old buildings. This can show itself in a desire to keep such
buildings just as they are as if they had always been like that. This
is often so with churches which are usually among the oldest buildings
in their community. But parish churches like Holy Trinity are in fact
buildings which have always been changing. They tell a story: the story
of their community down the centuries.
Above all the parish church is a visible expression of a community of
faith. This is the place in which people down the centuries have
offered their worship and prayer to God. Over the years the stones of
Holy Trinity have witnessed many different patterns and styles of
worship, and no doubt there will be more yet to come. Here people
have marked the key points in their life through baptisms, weddings and
funerals. Here children and young people have been nurtured in the
faith, and others have come back to a faith which has grown dim.
Without the worhip and prayer which takes place within it, Holy Trinity
is simply an interesting historic building; but to those of us who
gather here week by week it is so much more.
We hope you find this brief history interesting, but we pray that you
will visit the church and discover something of the God whose reality
is expressed within it - the God who offers life, love and hope to all
people in every age.
The Parish Church
The only religious
observances in Sutton Coldfield during the twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries took place in the Chapel of St Blaize at
the Manor and continued there until the end of the fifteenth
century, even though the Parish Church had been built some two hundred
or more years before. When both house and chapel were demolished,
Bishop Vesey used some of the abandoned stone to build two bridges over
the River Tame and put some of the carved stones both into the bridges
and into the gable of the tithe barn which stood on the site of the
present railway bridge in High Street.
The
only remaining traces of the earliest building in the present
Parish church are to be found below the east window — a plinth and
remains of clasping buttresses known to be features of a method of
construction associated with the first half of the thirteenth century.
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By 1300
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By
1500
The tower had been added
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The tower,
however, is of an architectural style found in the late
fifteenth century. It is thought probable that, for its first two
hundred years the church consisted of a chancel and nave rather shorter
than at present and that, when the tower was built, the nave was
extended westwards to be joined into it. Documentary
evidence of the church being enlarged in Bishop
Vesey's time is to be found in Dugdale's The Antiquities of
Warwickshire, where it is stated that the Bishop gave an organ in 1530
and that, in 1533, he built two aisles.
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o it is probable
that the side
chapels were added (the one on the south side to house the new organ)
and that these were extended westward during the following three years
to form the aisles. The parapet of the
tower was restored and five new
bells were hung at that time. In the early part of the eighteenth
century a small gallery was built across the west end of the nave and,
before 1755, galleries had also been constructed over the two side
aisles. In 1758 the Corporation allocated £100 for 'New Pewing in
the
Parish Church', but while this work was being carried out, holes
appeared in the floor and, at first, the carpenters were blamed.
However, on examination it was found that 'the breach in the Church was
occasioned by the Badness of the Foundations of the Arches or Walls of
the Middle Isles'.In
consequence, by 1760, repairs and alterations were put in hand under
the supervision of William Hiorn, an architect-builder from Warwick.
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By 1533
Bishop Vesey had
built new north and south aisles. New elevation.
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By
1750
Lord
Ffollliott of Four Oaks Hall had obtained a faculty for his gallery at
the west end in 1708. A small south gallery was there - its occupants
named. Other documentary evidence suggests there was a similar gallery
on the north side.
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Temporary benches for
the congregation were provided in the
chancel and two side chapels so that worship could continue and the
rest of the church was boarded off while foundations, pillars, arches
and roof were rebuilt. In the course of the reconstruction, the new
box-pews were installed throughout, the pulpit was set up in the
chancel on the south side with its tester (canopy) supported by two
Corinthian columns with a reading desk in front just projecting into
the nave. A clock was put in
the tower and new galleries were built. The
present south gallery is still as it was then, so it is possible to
imagine another just like it on the north side over what is now called
the Vesey aisle (the far north gallery was not built until the late
nineteenth century). The west arch was blocked in and what can best be
described as a two-tiered or storeyed
gallery was built out over the whole width of the rear of the nave,
backing on to the tower arch where the organ pipes are today. The lower
part of this gallery was for the use of Simon Luttrell and his family
of Four Oaks Hall. In the second tier, the choir and a new organ given
by John Riland were accommodated. The total cost of this entire
operation was £910.17s.2d., most of which was raised by the sale
of
trees from the Park. The font at this time was a white marble basin
supported on a classic pedestal and standing, probably, somewhere near
the base of the tower.
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Bishop Vesey's effigy
was recessed in the north
wall of the north chapel and protected by iron railings which had been
placed there in 1748 when the effigy had been restored and beautified
by the Warden and Society, following a period of neglect. Heated
controversy followed the allocation of the newly installed box- pews
which continued for some years — the matter being passed to the
Spiritual Court in Lichfield to be settled. The Warden and Society, in
their Minutes, record that 'several Greedy People of Low Rank' had gone
over the heads of the Corporation and applied to the Bishop of
Lichfield for the privilege of occupying the best pews.
A new ring of bells costing £100 was hung in 1784 but, proving
unsatisfactory, was replaced in 1795 by six new bells by Mears of
London. The south chapel was used as a vestry at this time.
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By
1765
A faculty for
an
extra window in the north wall had been granted in 1759 (opposite the
south porch). In 1760, new galleries over both north and south aisles
and a larger gallery at the west end had been built. The west arch
had been closed in.
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By 1830
A gallery for
the Lawley family had been built (Faculty dated 1779). Two galleries
for the children had been added above the north and south chapels in
1828 and stairways from the east end had been put up. At the same time
an external door was made to the tower stairway in the south wall of
the tower, while the tower west door was closed up to make the ground
floor into a vestry.
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In 1828 galleries
were added to both the side chapels to accommodate the children from
the newly built Town School. To minimise disturbance the children
entered from the churchyard through small doors made in the east wall
on either side of the east window. The outlines of these can be seen
today on the outside wall. Both galleries were approached by narrow
stairways. The girls and infants sat in the north — now Vesey — chapel
gallery and the boys in the south. Rush matting was put down on the
floor where the boys sat to deaden the noise of their boots. From 1828
until 1874 the base of the tower served as the vestry.
In 1829
the tester was removed from the pulpit, perhaps to afford a better view
of the preacher from the children's galleries or, more probably, so
that the preacher could keep a sharp eye on the children. A convenient
storage place for the tester was found on top of an inner canopied
porch which was then over the door on the north side of the Vesey
chapel.
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By
1874
The children's
galleries had been removed
in 1858. The clergy vestry had been built on to the north side in 1874.
The roof of the nave had been raised in 1863.
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In 1858,
however, the children's galleries and stairs were removed and the
children were then seated on benches in the side chapels, facing west.
In 1863 the nave roof
was raised to its present steep pitch, the clerestory windows were
enlarged, the double-storeyed gallery at the west end was taken down
and the choir moved into the south chapel where a new organ by Gray and
Davidson was installed.
In
1875 Bishop Vesey's monument was in need of repair. On 25th August of
that year the stone over his grave was lilted, revealing part of the
skull, a jawbone with a few teeth, and various other bones. These were
put into an earthenware jar together with a certificate confirming the
facts of the exhumation and names of witnesses. The jar was sealed and
reburied in the grave, covered by the alabaster stone and the present
altar tomb was built over it with the Bishop's effigy laid on top. At
the same time, the floor of the chancel was raised to the present level
and carved oak panelling and columns, dating from the seventeenth
century, bought from Worcester Cathedral (then undergoing restoration
itself) provided sufficient wood to make the choir stalls and the
screens behind them.
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By 1885
The old west and north galleries had been removed, the west arch
reopened, the external tower staircase door had been closed with
ashlar. The present north aisle and gallery had been built in 1875. The
chancel floor had been raised, the parclose constructed and Bishop
Vesey's effigy had been put in place on an altar tomb as it is now.
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Also in 1875 the
pulpit was moved to the north side of the chancel — almost as it is now
— but with steps leading up from the chancel. The tester was restored
to its proper position supported on slender oak columns. About 1939 the
pulpit was moved around the pillar towards the Vesey aisle with the
steps rising from the nave.
With the coming of the railway the town had grown considerably, so in
1879, the church was extended on the north side by the building of an
additional aisle with gallery above to accommodate the larger
congregation (only the south gallery was left of William Hiorn's
eighteenth-century timberwork). In addition, the Vesey aisle roof had
to be raised to make the new north extension possible.
The present font, lined with the marble basin which was its
predecessor, stood in the tower from 1879 until the turn of the
century, but it may have stood near to the south door prior to this
date. In 1884, two more bells, by Taylor of Loughborough, were hung.
The clock was removed from the tower because it was not functioning
well and it was considered that the Town Hall in Mill Street had a
clock quite adequate for the whole town.
In 1914 the chancel ceiling was decorated following a design drawn up
by Charles E Bateman, who was also responsible for the painting of the
nave and Vesey Chapel ceilings in 1929.
All the stained glass is classed as modern, the earliest dating from
1863 and the latest from 1965.
In 1929 the stonework outside also had to undergo considerable
restoration. To pay for this and for the redecoration of the interior
of the building, the Parish raised a large sum of money by all the
means at its disposal, the biggest event being at the Town Hall in King
Edward Square. This was a 'Bazaar in a Japanese Garden' held in
November 1928.
In 1965 the bells and the frames supporting them were in need of
repair, the work was ultimately completed after the many difficulties
had been overcome and the bells were rededicated in 1973.
In 1986 the outside of the building underwent major restoration of the
stonework.
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By 1930
The north-west vestry had be built (c.1900), the Vesey Chapel
re-ordered with an altar added so that it could be used for Divine
Service and the Canon Barnard memorial screen put up.
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