Trinity Church was built in 1873-5 as the new Wesleyan Methodist church. It is on Conduit Road, close to the junction with Park Road and about 160 m east of St Michael’s Church which had recently been built as a daughter church of the parish church of St Helen. Its 38 m Bath stone spire, rising high above St Michael’s simple bellcote, is designed to dominate the view.

An earlier Methodist chapel had been built in 1845 on a narrow site in Ock Street. Thirty years later, the Ock Street chapel and meeting room were too small for the increased congregation but there was no room to expand on the same site. The new Trinity Church had room for a congregation of 600 and its spacious site included separate meeting rooms. John Creemer Clarke, a prominent Methodist layman and local factory owner, is credited with largely financing the church with its  meeting rooms and the original manse.

The church is built of roughly-coursed sandstone in an early Gothic style. With its spire, its size and its over-elaborate window tracery, Trinity Church signals the important position in the town that the Methodist community had achieved.

The building was designed by the Reading-based architect W H Woodman.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

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