Tracking the Holy Trinity Memorial

The Churches Conservation Trust files for St James Church have been extremely helpful in tracing the journey of this memorial from Holy Trinity Church to the Slaughterhouse Pub in Liverpool. I can now say for sure that the memorial was in St James Church, Toxteth for a period.

This memorial was brought to my attention when my St James memorial project got some publicity and a lady contacted me to ask whether her relative was on the memorial I was researching. It wasn't but I did a bit of detective work and found out that his name was on an 'unknown memorial' on the United Kingdom National Inventory of War Memorials. I decided to see if the unknown memorial was linked to St James, it wasn't directly linked but I kept coming across connections to Holy Trinity Church, which was demolished in 1940. I finally realised that Holy Trinity had been amalgamated with St James. 

Church records show that after Holy Trinity Church was closed, the memorial was moved to St James's Church for safe-keeping. I have found images of Holy Trinity Church which show the memorial in situ there when it had a carved figure of Christ in the centre. You can see it on the far right of the photo, with a shelf of flowers underneath it.

A local historian who is researching St James informed me that the church records show there was some discussion as to whether they should receive a memorial from Holy Trinity in 1940 as it had a prominent cross (as an evangelical church, St James does not have any crucifixes on display) so it would seem likely that they removed the figure before accepting the plaque.

Later records, after St James was closed, refer to the plaque from Holy Trinity and mention that it has the name of Dr Noel Chavasse on it.

The next we hear of the memorial is in 1978 when a group of people visited St James' church and one of them noticed a wooden war memorial board laying on the stairs. They took a closer look and saw that it bore the name of  Capt. Noel Chavasse, MC & Bar. They contacted the Churches Conservation Trust and the Liverpool Echo. Coincidentally, the Echo had recently run some stories about Noel Chavasse so it was a public interest story.

Once their attention had been drawn to the memorial, the Churches Conservation Trust arranged for it to be cleaned and returned to the church, they didn't know where it had been sited (It may never have been affixed to the wall) so they chose a spot for it and by Feb 1979 it was on the wall of the organ loft, facing the aisle.

There is no other mention of the memorial until a report from the architect in 1992 that whilst inspecting the damage from a break-in and arson attack, they noticed that the war memorial board had been stolen.

There were no photographs of the board stolen from St James's but the fact that it had Capt. Chavasse's name on it, and the description of it as 'a framed wooden board' seem conclusive that it was the memorial from Holy Trinity.

So the memorial had been stolen from St James's Church, possibly because of the collectability of Captain Chavasse's name, possibly because it was a nicely carved wooden plaque that would look good on the wall of a pub... because that's where it turned up next.

The Holy Trinity Memorial in the Slaughterhouse Pub, Liverpool circa 1996

The war memorial in question was photographed in 1996 by the late Major David Evans for the United Kingdom National Inventory of War Memorials. At this time the memorial was part of the decor in a Liverpool pub (the Slaughterhouse on Fenwick St). It was listed on UKNIWM as from an 'unknown Liverpool Anglican Church.' Sometime later the pub was redecorated, sold and the memorial vanished. I know that enquiries were made at the time but nobody seemed to know where it went. UKNIWM included a list on the names on the memorial and researching them quickly turned up links to Holy Trinity Church and Industrial School, I presented my research to the local family history society and several WW1 research groups and they agreed with my findings that the 'unknown' memorial was originally from Holy Trinity Church. Sadly, it remains lost.