Holy Trinity Parish Halls and the Trinity Centre

Before the Reformation, many parishes had a church house, maintained by the church wardens for festivities such as parish ales.  There is no evidence that Holy Trinity or St Mary’s had such a place.  After the tower fell in 1740, destroying most of the church, meetings are recorded as taking place in the Weston chapel or in St Mary’s. Certainly by the nineteenth century, there were parish rooms on part of the site of the subsequent Parish Halls, now the Trinity Centre.  Here groups like the Slate Club and the Temperance Society met but there was little space for theatricals, lectures or parties. Though halls in the town were used, members of the parish wished for larger premises close to the church.  The old rooms were demolished to create part of the site for the new halls.  William Wells, parishioner, property developer, local benefactor and donor of the Holy Trinity chancel screen bought the adjacent cottage.  With the acquisition of a third cottage there was enough space for the new building.

This was designed by Eric Langridge Lunn, architect and parishioner.  The Foundation Stone was laid on 14 October 1909 and can be seen embedded in the wall opposite the Clergy Vestry of the church.  The grand opening took place on 13 April 1910, a showery day, when Princess Christian of Schleswig – Holstein, Queen Victoria’s third daughter, drove by motor car from Windsor to perform the ceremony. 

This photograph is reproduced with the kind permission of Guildford Institute

In his address the rector expressed the hope that “the building would prove useful not only to the parish but also to the Diocese, the County and the town.”  With a caretaker resident in what is now 6 Trinity Churchyard, pantomimes, concerts, harvest suppers, lectures and such events as teas for service men during the first World War, all took place in the halls.

After almost a hundred years of varied use, by early this century the needs of the parish had changed and the halls were in need of refurbishment and rearrangement more suited to the times.  The sizeable legacy left by a member of the congregation in 2005 came at an opportune moment enabling such work to take place fully on the lower floor, the installation of a lift to the upper floor and some partial refurbishment and rearrangement there.  The new Trinity Centre, as the halls are now called, was opened in the Spring of 2008.  The final phase of internal work in the Upper Hall and adjoining spaces will take place during 2009 in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the building in 2010. It is hoped that the Trinity Centre will also be useful, not only to the parish but to the town.