Description:
From the canal.
Holy Trinity Church was built in 1842 by H I Stevens. This new Church was built by the generosity of Francis Wright Esquire, of Lenton Hall, Derby Road, Lenton (now part of the Nottingham University campus). Towards the total cost of £6,000 he donated £3,000, besides giving the land for the Church site, the schools and master's and mistresses houses (opposite the Church), and a vicarage. At the time the Church was built, Church Street ran adjacent to the Church yard, over the level-crossing of the Midland Railway line, the present railway bridge not having been built until around 1890.
The first stone was officially laid by Francis Wright Esquire (donor) on 11th June 1841, while the completed Church was consecrated on 6th October 1842 at 11 a.m. by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln (the Right Reverend John Jackson D.D.). The Reverend George Browne M.A., who had been in the parish for a year as curate, became the first vicar of the new Lenton Parish Church.
The style of the Church is early English and it is 123 feet long, 57 feet wide, and seats 660. It is a stone building, with a high pitched roof, and consists of nave, with clerestory, north and south aisles, chancel, vestry, organ-chamber, and lofty square pinnacled tower at the west end having a clock with four dials. The first clock was installed in 1844 but has been replaced with one electrically operated.
Thomas William Hammond 1854-1935. Born in Philadelphia of Nottingham emigres, and orphaned at the age of four, he came to England with his younger sister Maria and lived for a short while with his grandparents in Mount Street. In 1868 age 14 he enrolled in the Government School of Art. On the 1871 census he is described as a lace curtain designer, and in 1872 he was awarded the 'Queen's Prize for a Design of a Lace Curtain'. Other prizes followed and in 1877 he was again awarded the Queen's Prize, this time for the design for a damask table Cloth.
Hammond was an indefatigable worker, and soon began to use his skills as a draftsman to record aspects of the changing town. He began showing his work at local venues in 1882 and in 1890 exhibited for the first time at the Royal academy. His real hobby was black and white sketching in charcoal. He drew about 350 pictures all together mainly scenes of a Nottingham he knew but which has largely passed away today.
Extracted from 'The Changing Face of Tom Hammond's Nottingham' by John Beckett which is the introductory essay in 'A City in the Making Drawings of Tom Hammond'.