Holy Trinity Church is in Bog Lane in the village of

Brathay Brathay is a parish in Cumbria, England. Brathay Hall and the surrounding estate belong to a charity, Brathay Trust Brathay Trust is a youth charity with its head office and residential centre based at Brathay in Cumbria, England. Founded ...

, Cumbria, England. It is an active

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

parish church in the deanery of Windermere, the archdeaconry of Westmorland and Furness, and the diocese of Carlisle. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building. The hilltop site for the church was recommended by William Wordsworth who, when describing it in a letter in 1836, said "there is no situation out of the Alps, nor among them, more beautiful than that where this building is placed".

History

Holy Trinity was built in 1836 with funds from Giles Redmayne, the owner of nearby

Brathay Hall Brathay Trust is a youth charity with its head office and residential centre based at Brathay in Cumbria, England. Founded in 1946 by Francis C. Scott, the charity is based at the Brathay Hall and estate near the town of Ambleside. The organisati ...

. Redmayne, who had bought the Brathay estate a few years previously, was a successful draper, who had a shop on London's fashionable

Bond Street Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the l ...

. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described the design chosen by Redmayne as "joyless": the architect is thought to have been John Latham, together with Redmayne himself. (Pevsner's description of the church as joyless was published in his ''North Lancashire'' volume of 1969. The revised edition describes the church as drab.) The church was

consecrated Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service. The word ''consecration'' literally means "association with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different grou ...

in October 1836 by the bishop of Chester, whose diocese at that time extended as far north as the Lake District. Additions were made to the church in 1905 by the Lancaster architects

Austin and Paley Sharpe, Paley and Austin are the surnames of architects who practised in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, between 1835 and 1946, working either alone or in partnership. The full names of the principals in their practice, which went under vario ...

Architecture

Exterior

The church has a

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

ed exterior with stone dressing and a

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

roof. Its architectural style is Romanesque. It is orientated north–south (in the following description the liturgical directions are given). The plan consists of a six-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

nave, a short chancel with a north vestry, and a tower at the southwest corner. Around the church are pilaster buttresses, and a

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

led frieze. The tower is in three stages. In the bottom stage is a west round-headed window and a north doorway. The middle stage contains two slots on each side, and the top stage two-light round-headed louvred bell openings. Along the sides of the nave are more round-headed windows. At the west end are three round-headed windows, the central being taller with two lights, and the flanking windows with a single light. At the northwest corner is a square

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...

. The east window has three lights.

Interior

Inside the church is an inscribed octagonal

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

carried on a squat round shaft. The chancel contains panelling, and there is a

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular architecture, for ex ...

behind the altar. The stained glass in the east window dates from 1916, and is by Powells. On the south wall are three windows dating from about 1910, designed by Revd E. Geldart and made by Taylor and Clifton. There is a

ring Ring may refer to: * Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry * To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell :(hence) to initiate a telephone connection Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...

of six bells, cast in 1836 by Thomas Mears II of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The organ is by Wordsworth, a firm from Leeds.

Present day

The

benefice A benefice () or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered. Its use was adopted by ...

is united with those of St Mary, Ambleside, and Holy Trinity, Langdale. Together with the Mission Chapel, Little Langdale, and the Ambleside Baptist Church, the churches form the Loughrigg Team Ministry. In 2011 there was a major restoration of the building and its facilities. The church has become a venue for musical events, in addition to holding services each Sunday.

References