Guide to All Saints with Holy Trinity Parish Church

The church down on Steeple Row in Loughborough often makes an appearance on this blog. My articles about All Saints with Holy Trinity Parish Church are often in connection with something related – maybe the bells, the Swithland slate gravestones, or the former rectors – so, there is no better way for you to understand its history than to pop down and experience the building for yourself!

During the Festival of Archaeology, which is a national two-week event, but which in Leicestershire spans the whole of July, there is a great opportunity to visit, go on a guided tour of the building, and hear a talk about the church in its urban environment. The details of this special opening event are outlined below. But, if you can’t make it along to this extended open day, what ten things – or maybe eleven!!! – are important to notice in Loughborough’s parish church?

Below the special event notification, the Parish Archivist highlights eleven points of interest – things you should look out for when you are able to visit the church! I've given you a bit of a taster, by including a few photographs, too!

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All Saints with Holy Trinity Parish Church, Steeple Row, Loughborough is open for visitors interested in church and local history every Saturday from 10am to 12 noon.

On Saturday 27 July we will be open extended hours from 10am to 4pm and there will be 2 talks, one at 11am with a guided tour pointing out the main points of interest and another at 2.30pm entitled “How an urban church changed and developed through the centuries”.

We will also be open these extended hours on Saturday 14 Sept and also on Sunday 15 Sept from 1pm to 4pm filled by the chance to experience Choral Evensong sung by the church choir a traditional service from the Book of Common prayer used in this and other ancient churches since the mid-16th century.

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Here is a quick resumé of the major points of interest the visitor will find. (More detailed information is available on site from one of the stewards on duty):

1.          In the churchyard a very fine and extensive collection of gravestones made from the local Swithland slate. They date from the late 17th to the late 18th century and can be identified by their colour, their reverse sides usually being left rough, and by their fine craftsmanship. They tell us a lot about changing styles of decoration and script as well as texts which were chosen, ages of death and much about the local community in status and occupation.

2.           Externally, the fine, west tower, a-typical for Leicestershire. Clues to who paid for it are in the heraldry above the west door [shields of the merchants of the staple of Calais and of the local merchant Ralph Lemyngton] and surrounding the west window [no definitive identification of all the badges has yet been successfully proved, but the bottom three on both sides are royal: the Tudor Rose, the pomegranate of Catherine of Aragon and the portcullis of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII; the others seem to be of lords of the manor and local landed gentry]. The tower holds a peal of ten bells.

3.           The entrance space beneath the tower is in effect a memorial chapel dedicated to the Taylor family and to the bellringers of the town. The floor memorial is made of bell metal: in its centre is the Taylor shield with the motto ‘Their sound is gone out into all lands’.  As now the only place in this country with a bell foundry, appropriately there are several reminders of peals which have taken place here and memorial plaques to three generations of the Taylor family.

4.           Mounted on the wall near the font [which is difficult to date but is probably Elizabethan or Jacobean, 1558-1625], are all that remains of the medieval brasses which were once in the floor of the church. Difficult to see is medieval graffiti on the wall: in fact quite a lot survives around the church. Nearby is a framed list of incumbents and patrons of the parish from 1193 onwards. Note that some of the medieval and 16th century patrons came from some of the greatest families in the land such as the Despensers, Hastings and Earls of Huntingdon before the patronage passed to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The list by itself does not disclose two periods in English history which saw religious division: the ‘see-saw’ between Catholicism and Protestantism in the mid-16th century, and the mid-17th century division between Anglicanism and Puritanism under Charles I and during the Civil War and Commonwealth period followed by the development of Nonconformity after the re-Establishment of the Church of England under Charles II which explains the words ‘ejected’ and ‘intruder’ by Oliver Brumskell, a Puritan, in the list.

5.           The nave roof has a fine display of late medieval gilded bosses and angels. In all there are 65 roof boss carvings. Many are foliated designs but you might also be able to identify a griffin biting its tail, a figure with big ears, a lion with an open mouth and hanging tongue, a bishop with pointed animal ears and at the east end on the north [left] end an elephant and castle, the crest of the Beaumont family Lords of the Manor of Loughborough in the 15th century. The crowning glory of the roof are the 18 angels, carved from solid oak, in size about half that of a human adult and each with a slightly different face. Most are playing instruments of the late medieval period but the easternmost on both sides hold shields which possibly represent the merchants’ marks of Thomas Burton and Ralph Lemyngton who both helped to finance the roof and clerestory.

6.           Three Charity boards fixed to the north wall of the nave list some well-known charities in the town such as those of Burton, Storer and Hickling. The one to Thomas Burton is particularly worth reading because of its importance in the history of the town: his endowments, which were originally intended to pay for a chantry priest [see number 8] were granted back to Loughborough by Elizabeth I for repair of the bridges, for apprenticeships and relief of the poor and for the maintenance of a grammar school. John Storer is commemorated by John Storer House in the town which encourages, supports and develops individuals, groups and organisations involved in community action and which runs a community and voluntary action.

7.           The parish war memorials [All Saints and Holy Trinity parishes] on the north wall were repositioned here to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Note particularly the First World War scenes at the base: low reliefs show a cannon, a biplane and an airship above a Dreadnought battleship, and a tank; above, a sailor and a soldier with civilian workers between them such as a doctor with single ear-piece stethoscope, farm-girl with hoe, nurse, industrial girl worker, miner with lamp, farmer with spade and string tied round his calves and an industrial worker in a boiler-suit who is holding  measuring calipers. At the base the exhortation ‘Remember’. Either side of the memorial the two panels contain the names of 30 men who lost their lives in the Second World War. Beneath, the three panels hold the names of 84 men from the parish who lost their lives during the First World War. In both cases, the names are listed alphabetically rather than by rank or by date of death. [See this blogpost for an account of the restoration and moving of the War Memorial back in 2015].

8.           The Burton Memorial chapel was set out in the 1920 and 30s on the initiative of the then rector, George Briggs, and replicates what was probably the site of Thomas Burton’s chantry chapel. Behind the small door with the initials TB you will find an original chantry certificate dating from 1545. Briggs intended that the chapel should record and commemorate the links between the town’s grammar school and this church so the panels are carved with the names of those who served both school and town in the first decades of the 20^th century. At the rear is a seat in memory of Headmaster Colgrove above which is a memorial to old boys of the school who were killed in the two world wars. The Grammar School took place in the chancel of the church in the period of Elizabeth I and then moved into a purpose-built school in the churchyard where it remained until 1826.

9.           The stained-glass windows date from the restoration of the church in 1862 through to the 1930s and close observation will reveal the varied styles and colour palettes of different companies: the earliest is the great west window depicting prophets and apostles, the gift of Mary Ann Herrick of Beaumanor Hall; the great east window is a memorial to George Davys, a native of the town and tutor to the Princess, later Queen Victoria before he became Bishop of Peterborough. The window is a good example of the Victorians using the medieval scheme of types and antitypes paralleling Old Testament with New Testament events.

10.        An interesting set of memorials in the nave and chancel, [those in the chancel recently cleaned in 2021] which show changing styles between the 17th and 19th centuries. Among them are six to rectors of the parish. The grandest is the alabaster Baroque monument to Joanna Walters. She is shown in her funeral shroud with two children who died in infancy with two angels either side. The family lived at Knightthorpe Hall in the town and the memorial was erected by her second husband with space for his name to be added.

11.        ‘A large and prosperous church, so much restored by Gilbert Scott in 1861 that it looks all 19th century’: so wrote Nikolaus Pevsner in his book on The Buildings of England, Leicestershire, but the nave and transepts were in fact built in the early 14th century, the chancel probably a century before, while the clerestory windows and roof of the nave together with the west tower are in the perpendicular style of the 1490s/early 1500s. Although no medieval fittings survive such as stained glass or wall paintings, a 14th century piscina [used in pre-Reformation days for washing of the vessels after Mass] in the wall behind the pulpit shows that the transepts of the church would have had chapels with altars for the town’s guilds. Other survivals are the triple sedilia (stone seats set into the wall) on the south wall of the chancel and a hagioscope or squint between the chancel and what was a separate chantry or guild chapel in the south transept.

Roger Willson

Parish Archivist

2024

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About Roger Willson, Parish Archivist

Roger read history in the 1960s at St Catharine's College, Cambridge and move to Oxford for his Cert Ed. His career was in teaching, mostly history: two prep schools and then all age groups and levels at Loughborough Grammar School from 1975 to retirement in 2002. His passion for the subject was awakened at school in Kent, but it has always been the 'history around us' rather than academic history as such which has been his main enthusiasm from cycling round the lanes of Kent to visit churches in teenage years to the work of W.G. Hoskins and successors in landscape history.

Retirement has given him the opportunity to share his interests with U3A and other groups and he has led many days out trying to open people's eyes to the huge interest to be found in our churches as well as study days and pilgrimage weekends. He has also been leading groups to the French and Belgian First World War battlefields for 30 years. He is a member of All Saints Parish Church, Loughborough and the Anglican Third Franciscan Order and has led four retreats at Launde Abbey. Again, in retirement, he has had an increasing interest in the use of art, poetry, music and landscape as part of his own spirituality and is keen to share this with others. He hopes to be able to contribute to the potential of All Saints Church for visitors.

From: https://allsaintsloughborough.org.uk/about/history

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Please note, the views expressed in this Guest Blog Post are the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the blog owner, lynneaboutloughborough.

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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