Patrick Comerford
As I made my way from the Grandpont area of south Oxford, crossing the River Thames and Gasworks Pipe Bridge to search for the site of the former Greyfriars at Westgate, I could not but notice the ecclesiastical tone to many of the street names between the river and Westgate Oxford: Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane, Blackfriars Road, Trinity Street …
This southern part of Saint Ebbe’s parish was once known as the Friars, recalling the Greyfriars or Franciscans and Blackfriars or Dominicans who settled in Saint Ebbe’s in the early decades of the 13th century.
The two friaries were abolished in the 1530s at the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, and most of their buildings were demolished. But their memory lived on in the local placenames such as Greyfriars, Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane, Trinity Street and Blackfriars Road.
That part of Saint Ebbe’s parish changed dramatically in the early decades of the 19th century when the gasworks opened on the north bank of the River Thames in 1818. As the population of Saint Ebbe’s increased, a schoolroom was licensed for services in 1842 and a new parish – Holy Trinity – was formed from the southern part of Saint Ebbe’s parish, with a stipend of £150 provided for the incumbent.
The new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, was designed in Early English style by the Oxford-based architect Henry Jones Underwood (1804-1852). It was built on the corner of Blackfriars Road and Trinity Street in 1844-1845 and opened in 1845.
Around the same time, a similarly-named Holy Trinity Church was being built in the village of Headington Quarry, Oxford, in 1848-1849. That church was designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott and later became known for its associations with CS Lewis.
Henry Jones Underwood, the architect of Holy Trinity Church, Blackfriars Road, was a brother of the architects Charles Underwood and George Allen Underwood, and spent most of his career in Oxford. He trained in London as a pupil of Henry Hake Seward and then joined the office of Sir Robert Smirke.
Underwood moved to Oxford in 1830 to work on alterations to the Bodleian Library. Much of his subsequent work involved designing churches and educational buildings as the city and the university expanded and the Oxford Movement increased in influence. He designed the library of the Oxford Botanic Garden (1835), and Saint Paul’s Church, Walton Street (1836), the first new parish to be created in Oxford and the first new church to be built in Oxford since the Reformation. Both were built in the Greek Revival style, but Underwood is best known for his work in the Gothic Revival style.
Underwood also designed Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Church in Littlemore for John Henry Newman in 1835, and it became a model for his other churches. The church was originally built as a chapel of ease to the parish of the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford. Littlemore became its own parish in 1847 and in time the church became a centre of Anglo-Catholicism.
Underwood’s other works in Oxford included Saint John the Baptist Church, Summertown (1831, demolished 1924); buildings for Exeter College on Turl Street and Broad Street (1833-1834); rebuilding Cardinal Wolsey’s Almshouses to make a grander entrance for Pembroke College (1834); and the north aisle of Saint Thomas’s Church (1846). Underwood died by suicide in 1852 at the White Hart Hotel, Bath, and JC Buckler completed his extension to Oxford Prison, now the Malmaison Hotel.
Holy Trinity parish was in one of the poorest quarters of Oxford and the church was built from cheap materials. There were two services each Sunday in 1854 and a monthly Communion service. The parish was a densely populated and very poor area to the south of the city centre. Great poverty, many beer shops, Sunday work in the colleges, ‘unbelieving masters’, and people tainted with ‘Calvinism and infidelity’ were blamed for what were regarded at the time as small church attendance figures.
By 1869, there were four Sunday services, with Holy Communion every Sunday and on holy days, and daily Morning and Evening Prayer. At the request of the churchwardens and ‘principal parishioners’ a surpliced choir had been introduced, all indicating the influence of the Tractarian movement and early Anglo-Catholicism.
Daily Morning Prayer was abandoned in 1872, but the number of Easter communicants rose steadily from 135 in 1872 to 199 in 1884. The patronage of Holy Trinity belonged alternately to the Crown and the Bishop of Oxford until 1881, when the Revd Edward Penrose Hathaway (1818-1897) bought the advowson and vested it in the Oxford Churches Trust.
Hathaway was a former barrister and ‘an austere old-fashioned evangelical’ who founded the Oxford Churches Trust in 1864 to appoint evangelical clergy to local parishes and to counter the increasing influence of the Tractarian movement and early Anglo-Catholicism. Through his zeal, he played a central role in establishing a strong evangelical tradition at several Oxford churches, including Saint Ebbe’s, Saint Aldate’s, Saint Clement’s, Holy Trinity, and Saint Peter-le-Bailey, and his trust appointed him the Rector of Saint Ebbe’s from 1868 to 1874.
Hathaway paid £1,000 for the advowson of Holy Trinity in 1881 and this was used to increase the stipend. A further augmentation was made in 1890 to meet the gift of a house for the living. The net income of the benefice in 1898 was £228.
Attendance figures at Holy Trinity remained steady or even increased until World War I, when most of the adult parishioners were either in the army or employed in war work. During World War I, 90 men from the parish died in the war and they were later commemorated on the Holy Trinity War Memorial.
The Oxford Churches Trust, founded by Hathaway in 1864, exchanged the advowson of Holy Trinity with Simeon’s Trustees in 1914 for that of Saint Matthew’s, Grandpont, and Simeon’s Trustees remained patrons of Holy Trinity until Holy Trinity was united with Saint Aldate’s in 1956.
Some of the poorer houses in the area were cleared in the 1930s, but a major redevelopment plan was delayed by World War II.
By 1951, the fabric of Holy Trinity Church was in poor condition. Meanwhile, the population of the area was declining as slum clearance programmes gathered pace. Holy Trinity Church was closed in 1954 and the parish of Holy Trinity was united with Saint Aldate’s in 1956. The building was deemed unsafe, and with encroaching urban clearance the church was demolished in 1957.
The 1914-1918 war memorial was removed from the church during demolition. It was later discovered in the 1980s resting against a wall in the rear garden of the former Holy Trinity Rectory. The memorial was eventually moved to Saint Aldate’s Parish Centre in Pembroke Street, and was later stored in a wooden case at Saint Ebbe’s Church. The memorial has since been removed from its rotten mounting and is said to be in a poor condition, covered in patina or crust.
Eventually, over 900 properties in the area were demolished, the last – 84 Blackfriars Road – in 1978. Many streets were wiped from the map or renamed. The records of Holy Trinity Church were deposited with the Bodleian Library in 1975 by the then Rector of Saint Aldate’s, and were transferred to Oxfordshire Archives in the 1980s. Further records were deposited in 2019.
No trace remains today of what was perhaps one of the shortest-lived churches in Oxford. One site says photographs of Holy Trinity Church, inside and outside, ‘appear to be rarer than rocking horse droppings’. The name of the church survives in the full name of Saint Ebbe’s Parish, which is formally Saint Ebbe with Holy Trinity and Saint Peter le Bailey, while the names of Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane – once known as Gas Street – Blackfriars Road and Trinity Street are reminders of the ecclesiastical communities that were once part of life the area.
