PLANS to perform the “most ambitious restoration project within the history of the realm” at Holy Trinity, Hastings, have won a £4.5-million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF).
Alongside restoring the constructing, which was placed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register in 2019, the PCC has set out the way it intends to “realise [the church building’s] community potential as the biggest interior space on this area of Hastings” and to make the church “the central hub of a considerable community activity programme”.
The Vicar, the Revd Simon Larkin, said: “This church, once susceptible to closure, is now fully alive and a spot of hope and inspiration for therefore many. This grant is an excellent endorsement of all of the sensible work our teams are doing to serve this amazing town, and we’re delighted that 1000’s more shall be a part of this ongoing story.”
Designed by S. S. Teulon — described by Historic England as “a very powerful of the rogue architects of the Gothic Revival” — Holy Trinity is listed Grade II*. The foundation stone was laid in 1857 by Lady Waldegrave, a clergy daughter and philanthropist who endowed several churches in the realm.
The parish of Holy Trinity has high levels of deprivation and is situated within the thirteenth most deprived borough within the country. An “activity planner” produced by the church last yr reports that its “church community has grown from 20 in 2014 — when the church was ‘nearly defunct’ — to around 530 weekly visitors in 2023, including a number of the most marginalised people within the town”.
Holy Trinity is now a part of the Holy Trinity, Brompton, network after a church-plant from St Peter’s, Brighton — itself once susceptible to demolition — in 2014. Holy Trinity’s quinquennial survey in 2022 warned that several issues needed to be rectified to make sure continued protected use; there was a necessity for urgent repairs to the outside. The recent multi-million-pound award follows a grant of £34,000 from the Heart of Hastings Community Land Trust to develop the appliance to the NLHF, which awarded a Development Phase grant of £479,000 last yr.
The planned completion date for the work is 2028. The church has set out hopes “that engagement with our church, our treasures, and our heritage will encourage people to find their very own purpose and place inside this community and create a renewed sense of pride and hope engendered by our wonderful constructing”. Visitor numbers are expected to greater than treble, reaching around 7600 a yr. There are plans for 167 annual activities and greater than 200 volunteers.
The plans include the preservation of a missal by the master calligrapher Edward Johnston, which has been described as the best illuminated manuscript for the reason that Reformation.
Last week, the Victorian Society welcomed the planned restoration work, but expressed sadness that “despite our objections and concerns from Historic Buildings & Places, the Church Buildings Council and the local Council”, the diocesan Consistory Court has given permission for the removal many of the choir stalls. The plans for the inside follow an earlier reordering to create more flexibility.
The church is situated within the “High Street Heritage Action Zone” in Hastings, which is an element of a £95-million government-funded programme that goals to “unlock the potential of historic high streets across England”. Hastings was identified in the present diocesan strategy in Chichester as a goal for investment, “on the idea of particularly low levels of churchgoing and high levels of deprivation” (News, 15 August). It records that average weekly attendance at Holy Trinity has grown from 55 adults and one child in 2014 to 338 adults and 120 children in 2023.
A four-year emptiness began in 2010 at Holy Trinity, and this was followed by a shift in tradition. In 1934, the Church Times described the church’s story as considered one of “full and regular progress to the setting forth, as today, of the total essentials of the Catholic Faith”.
The church’s activity planner reports that there are three local major parish churches also on the Heritage at Risk register and sets out plans to “share learning and supply mentoring”.
Several churches in the realm have closed in recent times. They include St Leonard’s, St Leonards-on-Sea, in 2018, which, Historic England says, continues to be “vacant and deteriorating”. The Victorian Society warned this yr that the Church Commissioners were “mooting demolishing” All Souls’, Hastings, which was closed in 2008 and has been on the market since 2012.
