Architectural Features
W crossing arches and probably the foundations of the N and S transepts are c.1394, built to serve a college founded at that date.
The church was almost wholly rebuilt in 1868 by F Chancellor preserving only the medieval crossing arches.
The windows are all similar and have late C13-style Geometric tracery with foiled circles above cusped, pointed lights without ogees.
The central crossing tower has slight offsets on the N and S faces topped by bands of carved quatrefoils.
Below the parapet is a moulded string course with gargoyles on the corners.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES Most of the fittings were installed in 1868 when the church was largely re-built, and are in a similar late C13 Gothic-style to the outside.
The arches stand on polished marble shafts with moulded bases and carved capitals.
Font with a deep, circular bowl decorated with carved roundels on short marble shafts and a deep circular base.
Stained glass in E and S transept S windows also 1868 by O'Connor.
In the nave, the tops of two former altar tombs of the C15.
The other has indents for a man and a woman, probably Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, d. 1460 and his wife Katherine, d. 1480.
In the chancel, several wall monuments to members of the Tuffnell family, including Samuel Tuffnell, d. 1758, diplomat and MP, a marble bust on a shallow chest with a grey marble obelisk behind and flanking urns, attributed to Henry Cheere.
Sir William Joliff, d. 1749, Tuffnell's uncle and benefactor, an inscription panel below an urn with an obelisk, lavishly carved with flowers and cherubs, also perhaps by Cheere.
HISTORY The college at Pleshey was founded in 1394 by Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, who also held Pleshey Castle.
It was augmented by three more priests and six poor men in the mid C15, but the numbers had fallen to a master and five priests, two clerks and two boys by the Reformation.
The church was rebuilt in brick in the C18, retaining only the medieval crossing arches, but Georgian church architecture was not valued in the C19, and the whole building except for part of the crossing was rebuilt in 1868.
SOURCES VCH Essex II , 193-5 Buildings of England: Essex , 626-7 RCHME Essex II 200-2 REASONS FOR DESIGNATION Holy Trinity, Pleshey is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons: * The core of the central tower retains features from a collegiate church of the very late C14. * It was handsomely rebuilt in 1868 by Frederic Chancellor, a well known church architect, in a boldly picturesque manner,