About the Church

In common with the aims of the Arts & Crafts Movement, the architect of Holy Trinity Church, John Dando Sedding, believed that a church should be "wrought and painted over with everything that has life and beauty – in frank and fearless naturalism …". But more than that, like other men of faith Sedding knew what a church was for: “It is well for a man to have a circle of religious exercises that can so hedge him about, so get behind his life and wind themselves by long familiarity into his character, that they become part of his everyday existence …”.

That is where, we pray, Holy Trinity finds itself today – an actively praying church at the heart of the community open all day everyday to everyone, where that "circle of religious exercises" is made a reality in the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and the weekly celebrations of the Eucharist at our core; moreover, "frank and fearless" as we seek to live what we term a "critical, compassionate Christianity".

The former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman famously referred to Holy Trinity Church as the "Cathedral of the Arts & Crafts Movement", containing as it does treasures by leading figures of the Movement.

The Arts & Crafts Movement was formed in the late 19th century to combat the inhumanity resulting from Victorian industrialisation. Machines dominated manual skills and imposed harsh working conditions on men, women and children. There was pervading ugliness and little respect for beauty and nature.

The Arts & Crafts Movement stood for the restoration of the prestige of craftsmen, the appreciation of nature, improving the education of the poor, and "sweetness and light" in architecture. The founding members were artists, poets, craftsmen, writers and architects – GE Street, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, John Ruskin, JD Sedding and others who were passionate in their belief and compassionate to those degraded by machines.

“You cannot educate, you cannot civilise man, unless you give him a share in art.” William Morris