Holy Trinity, Sloane Street

The first church on the site was a Gothic construction of 1828–30 designed by James Savage, built in brick with stone dressings. The west front, towards the street, had an entrance flanked by octagonal turrets topped with spires. Its seating capacity was recorded as 1,450 in 1838 and 1,600 in 1881. It was originally intended as chapel of ease to the new parish church of St Luke, but was given its own parish, sometimes known as Upper Chelsea, in 1831. It was closed and demolished in 1888, and a temporary iron church with a capacity of 800 was provided in Symons Street while a new building was under construction.[2]

Holy Trinity as viewed from Sloane Street

The new building, the present Holy Trinity, was built on a grand scale to a design by John Dando Sedding. Though not the longest church in London it was the widest, exceeding St Paul's Cathedral by 9 inches (23 cm). The internal fittings were the work of leading sculptors and designers of the day, including F. W. Pomeroy, H. H. Armstead, Onslow Ford and Hamo Thornycroft. Sedding died in 1891 (his memorial can be seen on the north wall in the Lady Chapel) and Henry Wilson took charge of the project to complete the interior decoration of the building to the original design. In part, he failed, for some of the glass was never installed, nor was the important addition of a frieze beneath the high windows even attempted. Some of the internal sculpture or carving is still incomplete. In the 1920s the interior was whitened by F. C. Eden, lightening the character and feel of the building considerably.

The church has an important collection of stained glass, including an enormous east window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris; there are also windows by William Blake Richmond (including some highly decadent imagery), Powells (the Memorial Chapel) and Christopher Whall (the incomplete clerestory sequence and two striking windows on the south side of the nave). The large west window, which Morris and Burne-Jones had apparently hoped to complete before moving onto the east window, was never done and the plain glass in it was eventually destroyed by enemy action, although all the other windows survived or were repaired. The project to glaze the west window remains to be realised.

The churchmanship at the time of the opening of the new building might be described as eclectically high, as the liturgy seems to have been drawn from a number of sources and traditions, although at this distance it is hard to gauge what exactly was done. After a long period of less symbolic worship, notably under the long tenure (1945–1980) of Alfred Basil Carver and the shorter incumbencies of his successors Phillip Roberts (1980–1987) and Keith Yates (1987–1997), the building has now returned to a liberal Catholic style of worship.

The church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs in World War II but was restored more or less to its previous appearance by the early 1960s. There was then a concerted attempt by the church authorities to close and demolish the building, replacing it with something smaller but this was thwarted by a campaign led by John Betjeman and the Victorian Society. The building now houses a thriving congregation built during the ten years under the incumbency (1997–2007) of Michael Eric Marshall, the former Bishop of Woolwich. The connection with the world of the fine arts, not only represented in the building and its fittings but also in sponsorship and encouragement of artists and musicians, continued under the Rev. Rob Gillion. Trained as an actor, Gillion became Rector late in 2008 but was elected Bishop of Riverina, the extensive diocese in western New South Wales, and moved there in August 2014. The current rector is Canon Nicholas Wheeler, who returned to England in 2015 following work in Rio de Janeiro.[3]

Sir Walter Alcock in 1913

John Sedding, himself an organist, provided an unusually large chamber for the noted four-manual J. W. Walker & Sons Ltd organ in the north-east corner. The instrument was badly damaged by enemy action in the Second World War but was repaired in 1947 and partially rebuilt twenty years later in 1967. A definitive rebuild by Harrison & Harrison was completed in August 2012, with the aim of restoring and enlarging the instrument by about 45%, using the surviving Walker pipework and matching new material, confirming its former position as one of the principal organs in London. There are seventy-one speaking stops and approximately 4,200 pipes.

Notable organists have included Edwin Lemare (1892–95), Sir Walter Alcock (1895–1902), John Ireland, and H L Balfour (1902–42), all of whom were leading men in their field. A vigorous tradition continues to this day.

The composer John Ireland was Alcock's assistant and had hoped to be promoted when the latter left in 1902, but was regarded as too young to take over. Alcock, on the staff at Westminster Abbey after leaving Holy Trinity, played the organ for three coronations and later moved to Salisbury Cathedral. Later players and assistants have included Ian Curror and Simon Lindley, Arnold Greir and, most notably, Alan Harverson (sometime Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music), Michael Brough, Richard Townend, Andrew O’Brien, Cameron Burns, James Brown and Oliver Lallemant.