HLF Public Participation Programme 2016-17
Introductory Talk by David Lepine
‘Holy Trinity Church Dartford: The First Thousand Years’
1 October 2016
How can a thousand years of history be compressed into a twenty-minute talk? That is about a century every two minutes. Rather than attempt the impossible I have chosen ten objects which illuminate key aspects of Holy Trinity’s history.
​
​This is a slightly expanded and partially illustrated version of the talk.
1. Reused Saxon Masonry in the Tower
This takes us back to the origins of the present church. Archaeological work in 1996 dated the tower, the oldest surviving part of Holy Trinity, to c. 1050 to 1080 and recorded the reuse of Saxon stone from an earlier church in its construction. Archaeologists have dated this church to the ninth century. The existence of an earlier church is confirmed by the Domesday Book of 1086, the first written record of Holy Trinity, which list a church and three chapels in Dartford. In Saxon times Holy Trinity was probably a minster church, a large central church that ministered to a wide geographical area that included several smaller chapels. It acted as a minster church until the parish system emerged during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
2. The West Window
A fine example of the Decorated style of Gothic architecture, this window dates from the 1320s or 1330s.
It reminds us that Holy Trinity was a large, splendid and important parish church in the Middle Ages. Dartford was the centre of a rural deanery (a group of neighbouring parishes led by a rural dean) and the bishop’s consistory court (a church court mostly dealing with moral issues) met regularly in the church. The vicars of Holy Trinity were appointed by the bishop of Rochester who often chose an important or rising cleric such as John Honley (d. 1477) who had been the first president of Magdalen College Oxford before coming to Dartford.
3. Mural of St George and the Dragon in the Lady Chapel
This magnificent and ambitious wall painting of St George killing the dragon, which dates from the late fifteenth century, vividly expresses the faith and piety of medieval worshippers. It is the only medieval image left in Holy Trinity but would have been one of many in the church in the Middle Ages. We can reconstruct its devotional landscape from the many surviving wills. There were cults of SS Sithe, Clement, Katherine, St John the Baptist, St Peter and St James among others but curiously nothing is known about the cult of St George other than the wall painting.
The next two objects relate to a century of religious and political upheaval from the 1530s to the 1660s, the Reformation and the Civil War.
4. John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (1563)
This famous and influential book was written as a memorial to the Protestant martyrs who died for their faith, many burnt at the stake by Queen Mary between 1553 and 1558. Among those commemorated by Foxe was Christopher Wade, a Dartford linen weaver. He was burnt on East Hill on 17 July 1555. Foxe gives vivid and detailed account of the occasion, even describing the ‘fruit sellers with horse loads of cherries’ which was based on eye witness reports.
Holy Trinity underwent great change between the 1540s and the 1660s. The medieval images and altars were removed and the mural of St George was painted over with whitewash. In 1547 a leading Protestant, Richard Turner was appointed vicar. On the death of the Protestant Edward VI in 1553, he fled abroad to avoid the persecution of the Catholic Mary I and was formally deprived of the vicarage in 1554. He returned to Dartford on the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558 and remained undisturbed until his death in 1565.
5. 'The Life and Death of Mr Vavasor Powell’ (1671)
Edward Bagshaw’s biography of Vavasor Powell, who was vicar of Dartford in the early years of the Civil War, describes him as ‘that faithful minister and confessor of Jesus Christ’. Powell was a radical Welsh preacher whose ‘fiery and impetuous’ preaching frequently set him against the authorities, both Cromwell and Charles II; he died in the Fleet prison in 1670. In January 1646, three years after arriving in Dartford, he left to join the New Model Army besieging Charles I at Oxford.
Dartford supported Parliament in the Civil War and Holy Trinity played a part in this. In 1642-3 the vestry was used to store gunpowder and in 1644 the bells were rung to celebrate the victory of Sir William Waller over the Royalist Sir Ralph Hopton at Cheriton in Hampshire.
After the turmoil of the Reformation and Civil War the eighteenth century was a much calmer period in the history of Holy Trinity.
6. Monument to John Currey, vicar 1776-1824
This large memorial on the north wall of the chancel commemorates one of the longest serving vicars of Holy Trinity. John Currey was vicar for forty-seven years from 1776 until his death in 1824 aged 89. His career sums up the nature of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Critics have seen this as a period of complacency and inertia when the church represented the establishment. Currey was born into an aristocratic family from Cheshire, their coat of arms is on his monument, and started his career as chaplain to the earl of Hyndford, He was also a pluralist (a clergyman who held two or more posts at the same time). From 1779 to 1824 he was vicar of Longfield as well as vicar of Dartford. How effectively was he able to minister to both parishes? His elaborate memorial in Holy Trinity suggests that he was highly thought of, at least by the established figures of the town. The inscription on it praises his kindness --- ‘benevolence tempered with discretion’ --- and his commitment --- ‘zeal controlled by sober judgement’. The sermon preached at his funeral, which survives in the parish archives at Strood, praises the ‘dignity and suavity of his manners’ and his work in the ‘promotion of Christian knowledge among the poor’. He also left behind a large collection of theological writings written between 1791 and 1811.
The Nineteenth Century
7. Open Letter to Francis Grant (1843)
This seventeen-page pamphlet written by an anonymous parishioner (in fact a local Nonconformist minister) was a blistering attack on the vicar of Holy Trinity, Francis Grant (1830-45). It denounced him as a ‘Puseysite’ and accused him of an ‘insidious attempt … to pervert, undermine and if possible overturn’ ‘Protestantism and Bible Truth’. The use of such strong language reflects widespread fears about Catholicism. Grant was part of the Oxford Movement whose members are also known as Tractarians or Anglo-Catholics; Pusey was a leading figure of the movement. Drawing on older pre-Reformation traditions, the Oxford Movement wanted to introduce more elaborate ritual, greater reverence and more emphasis on the eucharist in worship. Many shared the author’s fears that this was an attempt to reintroduce Catholicism in Dartford. In 1845 Grant left Holy Trinity for another parish.
8. Holy Trinity Church as it is Today
Much of Holy Trinity today is the creation of three restorations between 1792 and 1877. Pevsner’s guide to North-West Kent describes Holy Trinity as ‘over restored’ and it is hard to disagree. As John Betjeman put it (to the tune of the hymn ‘The Church’s One Foundation’):
‘The church’s restoration in 1883
Has left for contemplation not what there used to be’
​
For all the criticisms that can made of the changes and ‘improvements’ of the Victorian restorers without their work much less of the original Holy Trinity would have survived.
Holy Trinity underwent three major restorations.
In 1792-3 Robert Mylne sliced off the south west corner of the nave to enable road widening; better transport was a greater priority than preserving the church fabric. Mylne also raised the nave wall by 3 feet and added a clerestory (an upper level of windows).
Blomfield’s first restoration in 1862-3 raised the chancel arch and the chancel floor. He also put in a new east window.
In 1877 Blomfield restored the nave and added a new steeper pitched roof.
​
The Twentieth Century
​
How should the twentieth-century history of Holy Trinity be written? It would be too lazy to focus on the world wars, which though they had a significant impact were not its central themes.
​
9. Service Register 1912-21
Registers like this were kept by all churches in the diocese of Rochester so that the bishop knew what was going on. It might appear to be a tedious bureaucratic record of little historical interest, listing week by week all the services held in Holy Trinity. In doing so it reveals an important development in the church’s history in the twentieth century, the gradual elaboration of worship over several decades. Since the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the main services on a Sunday had been Morning and Evening Prayer with Holy Communion at 8 am usually attended by a handful of people. Francis Grant had tried to change this in the 1840s but without success. By 1912, however, Holy Communion had become more important and was moved to a more convenient time, 9.45 once a month and 11 am twice a month, to encourage more to attend. The register also shows how well-established music, a central part of worship at Holy Trinity today, was just before the first World War; there were regular organ recitals each month.
10. PCC Minute Book 1920-5
This is the first minute book of the parish council. Another dull administrative record, the meetings of the parochial church council? Can the twentieth century history of Holy Trinity really be so tedious? It symbolises another important twentieth-century development, the democratisation of the parish. Congregations started to play a much more important and active role in parish life. The vicar had to listen to their views and work with them.
Some Conclusions
Like most parish churches, Holy Trinity reflected much wider trends, across Christendom in the Middle Ages and across the country after the reformation.
​
Three themes stand out and will be developed in subsequent talks and a new church history and guide:
First, the changing patterns of worship across the centuries: the medieval cult of the saints and belief in purgatory when the mass was the principal form of worship; the Reformation which swept away the mass and medieval cults and replaced them with the book and the word as the pulpit supplanted the altar; and the gradual elaboration of worship in the twentieth century with the eucharist at its heart.
​
Second, the importance of commemoration as a central function of Holy Trinity preserving the collective memory of Dartford: there is an impressive collection of monuments in the church --- the splendid Martin and Vaughan brasses, Sir John Spilman’s tomb, the posthumous commemoration of Richard Trevithick and the war memorials.
​
Third, the role of Holy Trinity in charity, caring for others: for the poor in the two medieval almshouses and from the sixteenth until the nineteenth century in the operation of the Poor Law and workhouse; for the sick through the Poor Law a tradition which continues today with the training of counsellors; and its role in education, in the foundation of Dartford Grammar School in 1576 and in Holy Trinity Primary School.