Mick Hartley

The blue sheathed towers of Holy Trinity church:

It's in a bad way:

A leading heritage organisation has issued a warning over the state of repair of two of Islington’s most beautiful churches – the Union Chapel in Compton and Holy Trinity in Cloudesley Square. 

A report by SAVE London’s Heritage, dealing with churches at risk throughout London, says that although the Union Chapel – James Cubbitt’s gothic revival building which faced demolition in 1982 – is on the one hand a great success ­story, much repair work still needs to be done….

Holy Trinity, in Barnsbury, also Grade II-listed, is in a much worse condition. It was built in 1829 and was designed by Sir Charles Barry, the architect responsible for the Palace of Westminster.

The report, entitled London’s Churches are Fighting Back, says it’s reminiscent of East Anglia’s “great Perpendicular churches”….

SAVE’s report looks again at churches it first identified as in danger of demolition 30 years ago. While many, including the Union Chapel, are no longer under such severe risk, they still need large amounts of money to maintain them.

And although some churches, like Holy ­Trinity, have found smaller denominations to use them, it is still an uphill struggle for them to raise the necessary funds, the Victorian Society’s Edmund Harris, who wrote the report, said….

“Holy Trinity was deemed redundant in the 1970s and is now used by the Celestial Church of Christ, many of whose members are from outside the area."

Many of whose members? I'd be surprised in any of the congregation live locally. The Celestial Church of Christ is an African church – and this is in the heart of leafy upmarket Barnsbury. 

The building is now weather tight, but the work done has really only dealt with the most pressing concerns and there is no sense of an overall strategy to deal with the building properly.

“The turrets of the west facade are still in a poor state and clad in blue netting to catch falling masonry.

Internally, the damage caused by the water ingress is all too visible and throughout the interior paint peels and plater crumbles.

Green netting has been stretched underneath the nave of the roof to catch debris falling from decayed roof trusses.