Barbara Child ("Barb") was born and raised in Islington and has particularly fond memories of Holy Trinity where her father George Whitby ("Bob") was organist from 1932 right through to 1980 when the deconsecrated church was given over to the Church of Celestial Christ. He’s the distinguished chap in the photo below. Bob was evidently an extremely talented organist and played the organ at illustrious locations including St Pauls and the Albert Hall. Barb and her family were on a visit from Vancouver Canada to visit old haunts and we arranged for her to visit the church. Here they all are in front of the church.
We took the opportunity to ask Barb about her memories of that time and piece them all together. Briefly, this is her story.
Barb’s father, George William Robert Whitby, known as “Bob”, was born in West Ham in 1915. His father was an organist and Bob started playing aged 5 at the London School of Music. In 1932 he was appointed, aged just 17, as organist at Holy Trinity, staying there for the next 48 years. Clearly, he loved the place and dedicated his life to organ playing. Barb’s mother Olive was born in 1916 in Islington and was living in Barnsbury Square when Bob arrived. She was already deeply involved with Holy Trinity and its extensive pastoral activities – Barb says she called it her “saving grace”. Olive sang in the choir in the pews opposite Bob playing the organ. In due course they fell in love and were married, at Holy Trinity, in 1940 (see photo below). At this time they were living in Friern Barnet, Finchley where the family remained, but the church continued to play a central part in the lives of the Whitby family who visited the church every Sunday.
Barb and her brother were both baptised at the church and on our visit we were delighted to find the font still in place (inscribed: "Suffer little children to come unto me ...", see photo). She remembers going to Sunday School, attending the Boys and Girls Club (presumably the Whitelaw Reid club), singing in the choir and most of all sitting beside the organ while her father played it. Bob finally left in 1980 to join his daughter in Canada to which Barb, now an accomplished dancer and dance teacher, had emigrated a few years earlier. He continued playing the organ at Penticton United Church in Canada until he died aged 87.
The Holy Trinity organ was built by a Mr Russell in 1828 and originally installed above the west gallery but by Barb’s time it had been rebuilt and refurbished several times and had been moved with the organ itself together with its “case” to the north side of the choir, next to the vestry, with a detached console on the south side. By all accounts it was an unusually fine organ and the good acoustics of Holy Trinity together with the organist’s skills meant that superior organ music was a distinct feature of the parish, especially at weddings, as Barb recalls. This extract from Rebecca Preston’s Chronology of Holy Trinity showing all mentions of the organ goes to show how important the organ was in the life of the church.
Towards the end of the 20th century the church declined, as we know, and in 1974 the organ was removed and installed following further reengineering to St Nicholas in Chiswick where it stands to this day (see below), presumably with the original console. At the same time the Victorian Gothic case of the organ, said to be modelled on Barry’s design of the church itself, was separated and installed in St Mary’s church, Ware, Herts.
The thing which really comes across from this history is the huge social and cultural influence which the local church had on the Cloudesley neighbourhood right through to the late 20th century. As we know, the area was very run down from the late 1800s to gentrification in the 1970s and 80s, but Barb remembers growing up in a happy, socially rich and close-knit community here with the church as its hub.
