Holy Trinity Church, Seathwaite

Holy Trinity Church stands in the small village of Seathwaite, Cumbria, in North West England. It is an active Anglican parish church built in 1874 to a design by the Lancaster partnership of Paley and Austin. The church replaced an earlier building on the same site and is now a Grade II listed structure. For 67 years the curate of the old church was Robert Walker, who became famous through the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth called him ‘Wonderful Walker’ and mentioned him in his Duddon Sonnets and the poem The Excursion. The new church was paid for mainly by the industrialist H. W. Schneider. The exterior is constructed in coursed slate rubble with a slate roof and a gabled bellcote at the west end. The plan consists of a nave and chancel in one range, with an organ loft and vestry to the north and a south porch. All the windows are lancets, and wide buttresses stand between the nave and chancel. A stone attached to the porch incorporates a sundial that had once been Walker’s shearing stool. Inside, a stoup with a trefoil arcade greets visitors, and painted on the chancel wall are the Ten Commandments. The interior also contains a brass originally on a gravestone, commemorating Robert Walker and his wife Anne, who died in 1802 and 1800. Stained glass from 1897 by Kempe fills the windows, and a two-manual organ built in 1902 by Young stands in the loft. The church’s simple slate construction and modest furnishings reflect its rural setting in the Duddon valley.