Five years after this the spire, which had caused much anxiety and expense for many years, was blown down in a gale, falling across the chancel and causing much destruction.  All was restored and the spire rebuilt in three years.  Reference has been made to the existence of a vaulted passage through the south transept.  This was made necessary by the position of an ancient building known as Jesus Hall which adjoined the transept and thus blocked the way from “the Butchery” in this direction.  The Hall had probably been long used as the residence of the priests attached to the church but nothing is known of its origin.  It was destroyed in 1742.  Only in 1834, when the exterior of the church was recased was the passage blocked and the floor of the upper chapel removed.

The Register records the marriage of Sarah Kemble with William Siddons on 25th November, 1773.

CHAPTER II

THE EXTERIOR OF THE CHURCH

The church of Holy Trinity loses much, in popular estimation at least, by its nearness to St. Michael’s.  It invites comparison of the most obvious sort.  It is not nearly so large and its spire is not so high, these facts alone are sufficient to account for the popular view.  Fuller, in his “Worthies” says of the two churches, “How clearly would they have shined if set at competent distance!  Whereas now, such their Vicinity, that the Archangel eclipseth the Trinity.”

The plan is quite unlike that of its neighbour, being cruciform, with a central tower, a short nave, and a chancel distinctly longer than the nave.  On the south both nave and chancel have a single aisle, the transept projecting beyond it and there is a vestry at the east end.  On the north there is a similar aisle with a Lady Chapel at the east corresponding to the Vestry, but a large porch and several chapels fill up the spaces so that the transept does not in plan project.

Looking at the exterior as a whole it may be said that the more moderate length (194 feet), the central spire, 230 feet high, and the transepts unite in forming a more satisfactory composition than the long body and immense western steeple of St. Michael’s.  There however, the superiority ceases for the frequent “recasings” and restorations have left hardly a stone of the exterior that has not been renewed again and again, and the dates of these operations, 1786, 1826, 1843, sufficiently suggest the degree of knowledge and feeling likely to be manifested in the work.

Probably most of the structure was first built of the same friable red sandstone as its greater neighbour.  Much of the recasing has been executed in a rather harder gray sandstone, but the tower and spire are still red.