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Holy Trinity, Minories | |
---|---|
Location | City of London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Denomination | Church of England |
History | |
Founded | As an Abbey chapel, 1293 As a parish church, 1593 |
Architecture | |
Years built | c. 1300, rebuilt 1706 |
Closed | 1899 |
Demolished | 1941 |
Holy Trinity, Minories, was a Church of England parish church outside the eastern boundaries of the City of London, but within the Liberties of the Tower of London and therefore in the East End of London. The liberty was incorporated in the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1899, and today is within the City of London. Converted from the chapel of a nunnery, Holy Trinity was in use as a church from the 16th century until the end of the 19th century. It survived as a parish hall until it was destroyed by bombing during World War II.
The parish covered an area previously occupied by the precincts of the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate, founded by Edmund Crouchback, in 1293, for a group of Spanish nuns of the Order of St. Clare who arrived with his second wife, Blanche of Artois. [1] The nuns were also known as the Minoresses– which came to be adapted as the name for the district, Minories. The nunnery was surrendered to the Crown in 1539, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, [1] and the buildings, excluding the chapel, were used as an armory for the Tower of London, and later, as a workhouse. Some of the abbey buildings survived until their destruction by fire in 1797. [2]
The nuns' chapel became a parish church. Considerable changes were made to the building: all the ancient monuments were removed, a gallery, a new pulpit and pews were installed, and a steeple was built. [3] The first recorded reference to a dedication to the Holy Trinity dates from 1563. [4] Later in the 16th century, the church was a Puritan stronghold, where both John Field and Thomas Wilcox preached. [5] Until 1730, the church claimed the rights of a royal peculiar – including freedom from the authority of the Bishop of London; and the right to perform marriages "without licence". [6]
Monuments in the church included those for William Legge (1608-1670), a commander for King Charles I during the English Civil War, his wife, Elizabeth Washington (distantly related to George Washington) and their son, George Legge, 1st Baron Dartmouth. In 1849, a mummified head was found in the under-floor vaults, which was reputed to be that of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who had been executed for treason by Queen Mary I in 1554. The head was displayed in a glass case in the vestry, [7] but later went to St Botolph's Aldgate where it was interred in a vault and eventually buried in the churchyard in 1990. [8]
The church escaped the Great Fire of London [9] but fell into disrepair and was rebuilt in brick in 1706, retaining the north wall of the medieval building. [10] The new church was a plain structure, a single space undivided by pillars or columns, [11] 63 feet (19 m) long and 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, built at a cost of £700. [12] The bells were housed in a wooden turret above the projecting porch. [11]
In 1899, the church was closed under the provisions of the Union of Benefices Act 1860 [13] and united with the parish of St Botolph's Aldgate. The pulpit was taken to All Saints Church, East Meon in 1906. [14] The former church was used as a parish room until destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. [2] The medieval north wall survived until the clearance of the site in 1956–8. [15]
Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, later Duchess of York and Duchess of Norfolk was the child bride of Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower. She died at the age of eight.
Aldgate was a gate in the former defensive wall around the City of London.
The Metropolitan Borough of Stepney was a Metropolitan borough in the County of London created in 1900. In 1965 it became part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Minories is the name of a small former administrative unit, and also of a street in central London. Both the street and the former administrative area take their name from the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate.
William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, PC, FRS, styled as Viscount Lewisham from 1732 to 1750, was a British statesman who is most remembered as the namesake of Dartmouth College.
Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, was an English courtier and nobleman of the Tudor period. He was the father of Lady Jane Grey, known as "the Nine Days' Queen".
A royal peculiar is a Church of England parish or church exempt from the jurisdiction of the diocese and the province in which it lies, and subject to the direct jurisdiction of the monarch or, in Cornwall, of the Duke of Cornwall.
Sion College, in London, is an institution founded by royal charter in 1630 as a college, guild of parochial clergy and almshouse, under the 1623 will of Thomas White, vicar of St Dunstan's in the West.
Minories is a street in Central London and former civil parish also known as Holy Trinity Minories
St Botolph's Aldgate is a Church of England parish church in the City of London and also, as it lies outside the line of the city's former eastern walls, a part of the East End of London. The church served the ancient parish of St Botolph without Aldgate which included the extramural Portsoken Ward of the City of London, as well as East Smithfield which is outside the City.
The Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks is one of the Guilds of the City of London. It has no livery, because "in the 16th century, the Parish Clerks declined to take the Livery on the grounds that the surplice was older than the Livery and was the proper garb of members of the Company." It is not, therefore, technically a livery company although to all intents and purposes it acts as such. It is one of two such historic companies without livery, the other being the Company of Watermen and Lightermen.
The Holy Trinity Priory, also known as Christchurch Aldgate, was a priory of Austin canons founded around 1108 by the English queen Matilda of Scotland near Aldgate in London.
The Knighten Guilde or Cnichtengild, which loosely translates into modern English as the Knight's Guild, was an obscure Medieval guild of the City of London. According to A Survey of London by John Stow (1603), it was in origin an order of chivalry founded by Saxon King Edgar for loyal knights.
The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium is a cemetery and crematorium in the east of London. It is owned and operated by the City of London Corporation. It is designated Grade I on the Historic England National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Whitechapel was a local government district within the metropolitan area of London, England from 1855 to 1900.
St Botolph without Aldgate was an ancient parish immediately east of and outside (without) Aldgate, a gate in London's defensive wall. The parish church was St Botolph's Aldgate.
St Osyth's Abbey was a house of Augustine Canons Regular in the parish of St Osyth in Essex, England in use from the 12th to 16th centuries. Founded by Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London, c. 1121, it became one of the largest religious houses in Essex. It was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul as well as St Osyth (Osith), a royal saint and virgin martyr. Bishop Richard obtained the arm bone of St Osyth from Aylesbury for the monastic church and granted the canons the parish church of St Osyth.
St Leonard's Priory was a Benedictine nunnery in what is now east London, which gave its name to Bromley St Leonard.
The Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate was a monastery of Franciscan women living an enclosed life, established in the late 13th century on a site often said to be of five acres, though it may have been as little as half that, at the spot in the parish of St. Botolph, outside the medieval walls of the City of London at Aldgate that later, by a corruption of the term minoresses, became known as The Minories, a placename found also in other English towns including Birmingham, Colchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Stratford-upon-Avon.