Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 26/10/2020

SE30SE
2/3

HOYLAND NETHER
Elsecar
CHURCH STREET (north side)
Church of the Holy Trinity

(formerly listed as Holy Trinity Church and as on Wath Road)

23.4.74

II
Church. Built 1841-1843 with the patronage of the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam (1786-1857). Vestry and organ chamber added 1871. Early English Gothic Revival style.

MATERIALS: coursed, dressed and ashlar sandstone, Welsh slate roof.

PLAN: (the church is orientated north-south rather than east-west). The church has a nave with an apsidal chancel to the north and a tower to the south (the ritual west end). The main entrance is on the east side of the tower. The vestry and organ chamber lie to the west of the chancel.

EXTERIOR: Tower: this is of two stages topped with a spire. The tower has clasping buttresses that have corner shafts and gablets to the first stage, then rising as octagonal turrets topped by pinnacles. The entrance has a deeply-moulded arch supported on shafts, all set beneath a hoodmould. Above there is a lancet window with a hoodmould, this being below a clock set within a chamfered, square recess. The second stage, the belfry stage, has triple lancets with a continuous hoodmould, the central lancet being louvered, the flanking ones being blind. The spire is octagonal and recessed, featuring lucarnes and a weathervane.

Nave: the five-bay nave has a chamfered plinth and clasping corner buttresses with octagonal shafts topped by pinnacles. The bays are marked by offset, gabled buttresses. Between are lancet windows with hoodmoulds with head-carved stops. Above there is an oversailing course beneath a coped parapet. The gables are coped, the north gable (ritual east) having a quatrefoil-panelled plinth at its apex.

Chancel: this is lower than the nave and is a semi-octagonal apse. It is, set with smaller buttresses between bays detailed like the nave.

INTERIOR: this has a porch within the base of the tower containing a stone stair with an iron handrail up to the ringing chamber above. The porch also has two trefoil-headed doorways into the nave. At the ritual west end of the nave is a gallery with an ashlar parapet pierced by quatrefoils supported by an arcade of trefoil-headed ashlar arches set on cast-iron stanchions. The roof trusses are decorative, being divided into cusped panels, the tie beams being supported by arched braces set on carved-head corbels, the braces terminating with pendant bosses.

FITTINGS: octagonal Gothic Revival font, C20 chancel fittings.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: from the late C18, Elsecar was the industrial village of the Earls Fitzwilliam, whose seat of Wentworth Woodhouse lies nearby. At Elsecar they invested in coal mining and iron working, erecting industrial buildings along with good quality workers’ housing and a range of other urban facilities including a church and school, all within what had been an agricultural landscape. The survival of many of these buildings makes Elsecar an important and significant place, telling the story of three centuries of coal mining, Christian paternalism, and industrial boom and decline. The church’s foundation stone was laid by the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam on Whit Monday in 1841. It opened on Whit Monday in 1843, costing £2,500 to build. The vestry and organ chamber were added in 1870-1871, along with gas lighting.

Listing NGR: SE3868200220

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26443867

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

• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  For the Record