Tulse Hill, Holy Trinity & St Matthias

Useful information

Details of the Church

Holy Trinity Church was built in 1855/6 to the design of Thomas Denville Barry (1815 – 1905: an Irishman who came to England in 1845 and was the City Surveyor at Norwich and Liverpool), on land provided from the estate of Jonah Cresingham, in accordance with the wishes of petitions made between 1854 – 1856 and granted by the Bishop of Southwark.

The Church was consecrated in 1856 and is described in Clarke’s Parish Churches of London – as being built in a “decadent fourteenth century style with squeezed up windows and too much naturalistic foliage” ; it is also noted that a condition made upon the design, was that there should be “no internal supports”.

The church consists of a large clear span nave with symmetrical north and south transepts and a semi-octagonal apse/chancel at the east end, having an organ chamber fitted into its north east junction with the nave, a clergy vestry fitted into its south east junction with the nave, a north tower on the west side of the junction of the north transept with the nave and a turret on the north side of the west end.

Principal accesses are via a west door lobby, which enters a central narthex, with toilets on either side and tea bar and store, formed under a west gallery – extending for almost one bay width of the nave; and via a north porch lobby at the base of the tower, which is surmounted by a broach spire.

The undercroft under the chancel, south transept, part of the nave and the organ, accommodates a parish room/chapel, youth room, toilet equipped for the disabled etc. and store.

The church is built of solid load bearing brickwork, founded on traditional stepped spread footings, faced externally with Kentish ragstone squared random rubble to main wall areas, with dressed bath stone to the spire, copings, piers, buttresses, window and door surrounds and quoins.