Church Heritage Record id18792

West tower, three-bay nave with aisles and clerestory, crossing with transepts; chancel with north and south chambers, the latter forming an organ chamber.

The church was built in 1843-46 to designs by Edmund Sharpe, although the designs seem to have been drawn up in about 1837. When the Commission for the Building of New Churches was set up in 1818, Blackburn was one of twenty-five parishes in the country in which the population exceeded church room by 20,000 or more. A conditional grant was awarded for Holy Trinity in 1838, the case having been considered in the previous year, and the grant was actually made in 1843. In May that year the first stone was laid and by 1 July the construction had been commenced.

Holy Trinity Blackburn is a scarce and important example of the scholarly revival of Middle Pointed Gothic architecture. The plan of the church is considerably more ambitious than the usual "Commissioners Church", with properly developed transepts and a substantial west tower of the same width as the nave. The aisles, moreover, stand in a truly mediaeval proportion to the body of the nave unlike earlier nineteenth-century churches which normally allowed for galleries in the upper parts of the aisles.

The west tower is divided externally into three stages by small moulded stringcourses which encircle both the walls and the peculiar octagonal buttresses at the angles. These buttresses are relieved at the lowest level by diagonal buttresses of slender profile at the outer angles and again by smaller diagonal buttresses in the uppermost stage which eventually terminate in gablets. The octagonal core, however, continues above the level of the parapet to finish in crocketted pinnacles. The lowest stage has a moulded plinth on all sides broken only by the west doorway, of rather humble proportions under a moulded hood and surrounded by one convex and two concave mouldings. Higher in the wall is a two-light window which introduces a flattened triangular motif in the tracery which is to become a leitmotif throughout the building. There are also small single-light windows in the side walls at this level. The middle stage has a small lancet in each face with a stone roundel in the west face higher up to accommodate a clock (there is none now). The uppermost stage has two two-light bell-openings in each face separated by a slender buttress and with moulded hoods terminating in foliate stops. The tracery is of two different patterns (one of three triangles in a circle and one of cusped Y tracery) repeated on all four sides of the tower. The parapet is straight with two grotesque gargoyles on each face above a moulding enriched with ball-flower.

The flanking west walls of the aisles are symmetrical, each with a three-light window with trefoiled heads to the main lights (the middle of which rises higher than the others) and again a flattened triangle as tracery. There are small paired buttresses at the angles. The windows in each of the bays of the north and south aisle walls are of the same design but taller, and the smaller clerestory windows are a two-light version of the same. All the walls are capped by straight moulded parapets. The side walls of the chancel and of the transepts continue the same pattern as the nave, even to having two-light windows at clerestory level, but it is really the three cardinal gables which are the showpieces of the eastern part of the church. All are of the same design, with three extremely tall windows in the upper part (above a doorway flanked by two lancet windows in the case of the transepts) of which the central one is taller and wider, of three lights, and the outer two are each of two lights. All have the now familiar triangle in the tracery.

The exterior of the building has a dignity which is increased by the warm colour of the sandstone facing. The elegant and refined window tracery contributes to the overall impression, even if in some parts its proportions are somewhat exaggerated. A lithograph in the vestry shows that the tower originally intended to have taller pinnacles and a slender spire, but it seems reasonably proportioned even in its present form without them.

The interior shows perhaps more clearly than the exterior the conflict between the Georgian style and archaeological accuracy with which the architect found himself faced. Thus the nave arcades have accurately formed pillars of a quatefoil plan composed of four slender shaft s attached to a central core, but this is too early in style to be compatible with some of the other features such as the low pitched "Perpendicular" roofs. The mouldings round the arches are also based on good mediaeval precedent. On the other hand, the taller parts of the building (nave, crossing, transepts and chancel) are ceiled with flat panels divided from each other by moulded ribs. These contain for the most part a highly important series of coats of arms in full heraldic colouring. They are understood to represent the shields of families which contributed to the building of the church, but it seems possible from their arrangement that they may have come from another place.

The crossing is bounded by four clustered shafts taller than those of the nave arcade and carrying arches of larger dimensions but with similar mouldings. At the stops of the mouldings which outline the secondary arches are carved busts rather than heads, and these have been enlivened in bright colours. The inner halves of the north and south transepts are furnished with pews facing inwards towards the nave and the outer part of the north trensept is arranged as a chapel, while that of the south transept is arranged as a baptistery. The walls throughout are plastered and painted white. A photograph in the vestry indicates that there were originally galleries in the aisles and transepts in addition to that which survives at the west end, but these were not intrinsic to the architectural form of the building. At the west end of the nave a tall slender arch communicates with the tower space, and above the level of the gallery this is filled with glazing set in a design of a seven-light window with tracery which is based on the same motif as elsewhere in the building.

The chancel is of two bays distinguished by a plain arch set between the two which divides the choir from the sanctuary, an early example of a sanctuary which must surely have been spacious enough to satisfy the ecclesiologists of the next generation since it was not necessary to alter or replace it later in the century, as so often happened. From the western bay arches similar to those in the nave open into the north chapel and south organ chamber, and both these areas communicate by similar arches with the transepts. The north chapel is in fact simply furnished with pews facing inwards. The chancel floor is laid with black and white marble paving which may be of later date but is nonetheless appropriate. There are two steps at the the junction of the crossing and the chancel, one at the arch midway along the chancel and one at the communion rails before a final footpace round the altar itself.