Holy Trinity Church, Morecambe, or Morecambe Parish Church, is in Church Street,

Morecambe Morecambe ( ) is a seaside town and civil parish in the City of Lancaster district in Lancashire, England. It is in Morecambe Bay on the Irish Sea. Name The first use of the name was by John Whitaker in his ''History of Manchester'' (1771), w ...

, Lancashire, England. It is the

Anglican parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

of Morecambe, in the deanery of Lancaster, the archdeaconry of Lancaster and the diocese of Blackburn. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.

History

The original church was built as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently. Often a chapel of ea ...

of St Mary's, Lancaster in 1745 on land bequeathed for the purpose in the will of Francis Bowes, the village blacksmith, who died in 1742. This was before the creation of the town of Morecambe from three former villages; this building was in Poulton-le-Sands. By the early 1800s the chapel was too small for the growing population. It was rebuilt in 1840–41 to a design by the Lancaster architect Edmund Sharpe. The foundation stone was laid on 16 June 1840, and the new 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 ...

on 15 June 1841 by the Bishop of Chester. The church cost £1,288 () to build, and Queen Victoria made a personal contribution to this. As originally built, the church seated 498 people. A south aisle was added in 1866 by Sharpe's successor,

E. G. Paley Edward Graham Paley, usually known as E. G. Paley (3 September 1823 – 23 January 1895), was an English architect who practised in Lancaster, Lancashire, in the second half of the 19th century. After leaving school in 1838, he went to La ...

. In 1897 Austin and Paley, (further successors in the architectural practice), added a new chancel, an organ chamber, and vestries, and provided an additional 69 seats, at an estimated cost of £1,160. A Lady chapel was created in the southeast of the church in 1966. In 1995 the church was re-ordered to celebrate 250 years since the foundation of the church.

Architecture

Exterior

The church is built in sandstone with a green

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 plan consists of a west tower, a nave with a south aisle and a north transept, and a chancel with its roof at a lower level. In the angle between the transept and the chancel is a vestry. The tower has three stages with corner buttresses. There is a west door with three

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural element are typical of Gothic church edifices of the earliest period. Lancet wi ...

s above it. On the west and south sides of the middle stage are clock faces. In the top stage are triple stepped lancet bell openings. The tower is surmounted by a parapet that rises to a triangular gable above each bell opening, and there are

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 ...

s at the corners. The north wall of the nave consists of six

bays 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, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narr ...

, separated by buttresses and containing lancet windows. The south wall has seven bays, also separated by buttresses; the windows have two lights, and over each window the parapet rises to a triangle. The east window has five lights.

Interior

Internally there is a seven-bay arcade carried on octagonal timber columns, and a west gallery containing the coat of arms of Queen Victoria. Stained glass in the chancel, and some of it elsewhere in the church, is by Shrigley and Hunt. Other glass is by Abbott and Company, and by the Loyne Ecclesiastical Studios. The Lady Chapel contains a

Westmorland Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...

slate altar. In the vestry is a tablet from the original church commemorating Francis Bowes. In the south aisle is a memorial to the

South African War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

dating from about 1904, composed of copper and brass repoussé work. There is a ring of eight bells: the original six were recast and augmented to eight in 1939 by John Taylor & Co.

References

History

Architecture

Exterior

Interior

See also

References