Church of the Most Holy Trinity with St Mary

The Church of the Most Holy Trinity with St Mary — Holy Trinity, Hoxton — is an Anglican church in the Hoxton district of the London Borough of Hackney, notable not only for its distinctive tower and broach spire but for its long adherence to High Church doctrines and liturgical practices, which made this East End parish the unlikely birthplace of one of Anglo-Catholicism's most influential liturgical books. Its compound name records a wartime marriage: in 1941 Holy Trinity merged with the parish of St Mary, Britannia Walk, after the latter was made unusable by aerial bombing.

The Grade II listed building was completed in 1848 to the design of William Railton — the architect of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square — who drew his inspiration from thirteenth-century English models and built in Kentish ragstone. The interior has tall, thin arcades on octagonal piers and whitened walls. In 1896 the lowest portion of the tower was converted into a baptistry opening into the south-west corner of the church, to the design of Spencer W. Grant.

The church's High Church character reached its fullest expression under the Reverend Henry Kenrick, vicar from 1905 to 1937, who was the progenitor of the influential and widely adopted Missale Anglicanum — the English Missal — which he developed for use at Holy Trinity, Hoxton. First published in 1912 by W. Knott of London, it went through several editions in the following years and spread far beyond Hoxton, becoming the defining service book of Anglo-Catholic worship across the English-speaking world. A description of the church in 1947 captures the devotional landscape Kenrick's tradition created: two holy water stoups; shrines dedicated to the Sacred Heart, St George and St Joseph; above a side altar an image of the Virgin and Child, the Virgin adorned with an elaborate blue robe; and at the back of the church a Pietà and an altar for the offering of Requiem Masses for departed souls.

The Second World War remade the church. Aerial bombing in January 1941 damaged the building — the same air raid that left St Mary, Britannia Walk entirely derelict, prompting the merger of the two parishes. In 1942 the chancel was reordered under the supervision of Martin Travers, the most celebrated Anglo-Catholic church artist of his generation, and the changes he oversaw turned destruction into devotion. The high altar was remade using stones from six local churches bombed out during 1940–41 — a war memorial in the most literal sense. The east-end lancet windows were filled in and covered by a large framed panel above the altar containing a gilded rood by the Reverend William E. A. Lockett; the roundel above, depicting the Holy Spirit as a dove, is by Travers himself, as is a gilded roundel above the chancel arch. The organ on the south side of the chancel, a Bishop & Starr instrument put beyond repair by the bombing, was cleared away; a new confessional with tall Corinthian pilasters was provided, possibly from old woodwork; and a west gallery was installed, adorned with hatchments, ready for a replacement pipe organ — which duly arrived in 1952, built by the firm of John Compton.

Through the merger, Holy Trinity also became the custodian of treasures with a deeper London pedigree. St Mary, Britannia Walk had inherited a number of historic items from the City church of St Mary Somerset Street, demolished in 1871, and these passed to Hoxton: a pulpit made in 1695 by the joiner Samuel Port, with carvings of flowers and cherubs' heads executed by Jonathan Maine — a craftsman of the Wren-era City churches; early nineteenth-century communion plate; a font and font cover; and a bell.

Adjacent to the church on the north-east stands the former parish school, now the parish halls. Opened on 25 May 1864 by the Bishop of London at a cost of £1,687, it was designed by Arthur Ashpitel and built by Messrs Carter of Westminster to accommodate between six and seven hundred children — boys, girls and infants. One noteworthy provision was a drinking fountain accessible to the public as well as the children, "and in that crowded neighbourhood it is hoped will prove a great boon". The dedication stone records that the schools were "built mainly by the employers of London in the neighbourhood upon ground given by the incumbent, The Rev. T. Boys" — to the glory of God and for the benefit of the poor.

The church's clergy and musicians have left other curious footnotes: the organists' roll includes Frederick Russell in the 1890s and Henry Horse from 1899 to 1912 — the post was advertised in 1888 at a salary of £35 a year — and later clergy included the Reverend Kenneth Loveless, the noted folk-music figure. Holy Trinity continues its Anglo-Catholic witness in a Hoxton transformed around it, the gilded rood above Travers's altar of gathered bomb-stones still presiding over a church where the English Missal was born.