The truncated spire of Holy Trinity church in Minchinhampton is a familiar landmark around this small Gloucestershire town, but how much do people know about the rest of the church? A new book by Stroud archaeologist Chiz Harward reveals the rich history of this often over-looked, but highly significant Cotswold church with a history stretching back to the Normans.

The book is the result of several years of archaeological fieldwork and research starting in 2016. A major reordering (refurbishment) of the church involved taking up the Victorian pews and floors to install under-floor heating and fit a new stone floor to designs by Antony Feltham King of St Anne’s Gate Architects. The church commissioned Chiz, who specialises in church archaeology, to research the church and investigate alongside local conservation builders Nick Miles Building Contractors. Excavations revealed traces of the medieval church with finds including inscribed designs of window tracery, fragments of memorials, coffin handles, graves and tombs, but Chiz says that it was when the excavated evidence could be linked to old documents that the history of the church really came to life. ‘The documents, plans, paintings and records combined with the finds and the standing building to tell the complex story of the church and the people who built it, ran it, and worshipped there.’

After the chancel, nave and aisles were demolished in 1842 the builder -a man named Shepstone- wrote a detailed description of the medieval church he demolished; those details helped Chiz reconstruct aspects of the Norman church, and the comprehensive rebuilding of the church in the early 14th century when local patrons competed to leave their mark with some audacious Decorated Gothic architecture. ‘Many know the spire and its coronet, but it is the south transept, built to commemorate John and Lucy Ansley in 1330, that is the jewel of the church and one of the finest pieces of Decorated architecture in the region. The rose window, the stone roof and scissor vault, and the heavily buttressed walls are a piece of first-class, groundbreaking architecture’.

That 14th century church was Catholic in its faith, its new chapels dedicated to saints and to the souls of wealthy benefactors, its walls echoing to the mass and richly decorated with statues and altar hangings, but there is also evidence for the Reformation two hundred years later with the traumatic ebb and flow of Protestant and Catholic faith seen through the purchases of simple sundries such as candles and incense, wine and books.  

‘We found fragments of wall plaster painted with text, from the punctuation we could see that it was written in English, not Latin, and stylistically dated to the later 16th century when the church was Protestant; when we looked in the Churchwardens’ Accounts there was a reference to an Adam Painter being paid 4 shillings for painting the Ten Commandments on the walls in 1594. Were those fragments painted by Adam?’

By 1842 the church was in poor repair and the philanthropic lord of the manor David Ricardo had the church largely rebuilt by architect Thomas Foster. Holy Trinity was rebuilt just as the Gothic Revival was starting to gather momentum, but Foster’s was really a late Georgian Gothick design. In the 1860s a letter from eminent Gothic Revival architect William Burges was disparaging of Foster’s work and lamented the loss of so much medieval fabric. Burges rebuilt the chancel with a double-plane east window echoing the tracery of the south transept’s rose window, adding some much-needed ‘bling’ to Foster’s austere Perpendicular.

After the latest building campaign the church is now warm, bright and used. The new book is to be launched with a celebration at the church on 17th May, with a talk on the church by Chiz Harward and an update on the latest project -the restoration of Holy Trinity’s stained glass. Books will be available to purchase on the night.

‘If the sign of a successful church is a busy diary, then trying to find a slot for the book launch shows that the recent refurb has made Holy Trinity a truly successful church, used every single day by different groups, and open every single day to worshippers and visitors. It’s been absolutely fascinating to work here and get to know the church so well’.

And the missing spire? Well it seems that after many years of problems, with numerous bills paid to surveyors, builders and leadworkers, the spire was finally reduced in 1563, giving the church its distinctive profile. 

‘Your Church Newly Built…’ a History of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, by Chiz Harward is published by Hobnob Press for the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club, copies are available from Holy Trinity church, local bookshops, Hobnob Press, and online retailers for a very affordable £20.

Chiz Harward @ Urban Archaeology He is a Stroud-based archaeologist specialising in church archaeology. He works on many parish churches and at Gloucester cathedral.