The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity: the building of Gibraltar's Protestant church

by Jacqueline Reiter

When I visited Gibraltar last year for some research, one of the buildings on my list of "things to see" was the Protestant Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. I mostly wanted to say hi to Sir George Don, the Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar during the time I was researching (he's buried there). It's also a mighty pretty building in its own right.

Monument to Sir George Don

Fortunately, the history of the building cropped up fairly regularly in my research over the next few days. The lack of a large Protestant church until the 1830s reflects Gibraltar's cosmopolitan background. British, Genoese, Jews, Spaniards, Catholics, and Protestants all rubbed shoulders in Gibraltar's hot, narrow streets and alleys. The Protestant contingent of the town was very small, about 13%, limited mostly to the British soldiery and some of the British mercantile families.[1]

There had been a Catholic cathedral in Gibraltar since before the British arrival in 1704, and the Jews had had a synagogue since 1724, but the Protestants had nothing of their own. The more prosperous townspeople had the opportunity to join the Governor for divine worship in his private chapel attached to his official residence. Even so, if they and all the highest-ranking military officers showed up at the same time, the place was a bit of a squeeze. 

The Governor's Chapel (on the right)

In 1820 the leading Protestant citizens appealed to Don, who laid their request for a Protestant church before the Colonial Secretary.

The Colonial Office expressed interest, and the proposal went as far as drawing up an elaborate financial estimate of £5000, but the minute the Treasury officials saw this figure they panicked (this, you must realise, in the straitened post-Napoleonic period of strict government-sponsored financial retrenchment). The petition was filed at the back of a drawer somewhere and forgotten about for eighteen months.

Fast-forward to 1822. Don, the Lieutenant-Governor, handed the active superintendence of Gibraltar over in November 1821 to the actual Governor, the Earl of Chatham. Chatham was well-connected and influential, and the Protestants thought he might just pull a few strings for them.

They were not wrong. Chatham was a keen proponent of Christian morality in the garrison under his command. He forbade trading, drinking and gambling on Sundays and personally chaired Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge meetings. Sponsoring a Protestant church was right up his street.

He wrote to Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, in July 1822 proposing a solution to the problem of cost. Chatham knew of an old, derelict Barrack Office-owned storehouse in Gibraltar known as "White Cloister". Land in Gibraltar was precious and expensive, because it all belonged to the Crown and was, therefore, transferable generally only by leasehold, with express permission from Whitehall. Chatham thought selling "White Cloister" would produce more than enough money both to build a new barrack store and provide the missing £5000 for a church, if it were built "without all the Ornaments proposed in the former plan".[1]

After receiving Bathurst's go-ahead in October, Chatham conferred with the Chief Engineer, Robert Pilkington, on a plan that would be practical, aesthetically pleasing, and (above all) cheap. Pilkington drew up several plans which he laid before the Governor. The design Chatham selected was, as Pilkington observed, "a feature of Building familiar to the Eye in this Country, yet ... obtaining the required Accommodation, and for a limited Sum of Money": a low, square building in a "Moorish style" for 1300 people, with separate entrances at each end for civil and military worshippers.[2]

Interior of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity

The proposal was sent to the Colonial Office in February 1823, and laid before the Treasury in May. Possibly it took this long because Chatham, in a moment of typical absent-mindedness, forgot to send the plan along with the estimate.[3] Meanwhile, the sale of the White Cloisters went through and produced an even larger sum than Chatham had hoped. All that was needed now was final approval to build, and Chatham was confident enough to inform the important Protestants in the garrison that they would soon be able to start building.

He had spoken too soon. In March 1824, in response to the deafening silence from Whitehall, Chatham reminded Bathurst that "His Majesty's Protestant Subjects in this Garrison have been most anxiously waiting for the final decision on the subject of the Church which I was authorised to give them hopes would be granted them".[4]

This dispatch (received on 8 April) nearly gave the Treasury officials a heart attack. Faced with the need to make a final call, the Treasury suddenly remembered all sorts of obstacles. It had now been fourteen months since Pilkington had drawn up his plan: a new plan would now be needed, preferably on a more pared-down scale, because a church for 1300 people was surely too big for a population that was predominantly Catholic and Jewish. Faced with the prospect of paying an annual stipend to a government-appointed clergyman, the Treasury declared the best solution would be to add galleries to the existing chapel attached to the Governor's residence, and withheld their permission to commence building.[5]

Chatham was not impressed with this unexpected back-pedalling. Further correspondence ensued in which Chatham pointed out, in increasingly clipped language, that White Cloisters had produced enough money to make the Treasury's financial fears unwarranted. In February 1825 the Treasury Board caved in and, on 22 February, informed Chatham "that there no longer exists any difficulty in carrying His Majesty's Gracious Intentions ... into effect".[6]

Building on what would become the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity began in June 1825. One of the last things Lord Chatham did before returning to England was to lay the foundation stone. Invitations to the foundation ceremony were issued on 30 May to the prominent merchants and citizens of the town.[7] 

Copy of the invitation to the foundation ceremony for the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (Gibraltar National Archives, Local Correspondence 1818-29)

On 1 June Chatham and Don marched out with the military and civilian authorities to the spot where the church was to be built, through a lane of troops composed of the Welsh Fusiliers and the 64th Regiment of Foot. Two brass plates, one with Chatham's name and one bearing Don's, were affixed to the foundation stone. A box containing coins and a Coronation Medal was laid beneath it.

"His Excellency went through the customary ceremony of using the trowel and mallet," the Gibraltar Chronicle reported, "and the whole concluded with prayers suited to the occasion".[8]

The cathedral was completed in 1832, a lasting monument to Don and Chatham's period of active partnership – and a slap in the face of government penny-pinching.

References

[1] Marc Alexander, Gibraltar: conquered by no enemy (London, 2008)

[1] Chatham to Lord Bathurst, 26 July 1822, Gibraltar National Archives Military Secretary's Office 1819-27

[2] Robert Pilkington to Chatham, 8 February 1823, National Archives CO 91/80

[3] "The Plan did not accompany the Dispatch": pencilled note on Chatham's 14 February dispatch to Lord Bathurst, National Archives CO 91/80

[4] Chatham to Lord Bathurst, 17 March 1824, National Archives CO 91/81

[5] Treasury minute, 13 April 1824, National Archives CO 91/82

[6] George Harrison to Chatham, 22 February 1825, Gibraltar National Archives Dispatches to Gibraltar 1825

[7] Gibraltar National Archives, Local Correspondence 1818-29

[8] Gibraltar Chronicle, 1 June 1825

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Jacqueline Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She is currently working on the first ever biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham. "The Late Lord" will be published by Pen & Sword Books in January 2017. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/, and can be found on Twitter as https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.

They're real people, you know...

by Jacqueline Reiter

I write about real people. I know, I know, every author writes about “real people”, in that fictional characters come alive on the page of the book they inhabit, but I write about real people, and for some reason I can't wrap my head around this. Why? I have no idea.

Technically I am no longer an author of fiction, although I'm not saying I won't go back to it when the opportunity occurs. My "work-in-progress" is not a novel but a biography, of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, elder brother of British prime minister William Pitt the Younger.

Real people

They are, obviously, real historical personages. If I hopped into my time machine and zoomed back to the year 1800, I might be able to meet them. They spoke words that were recorded by journalists and diarists; they wrote the letters I have read in the archives; they lived in houses I have visited. They went to sleep at night, got up in the mornings (... OK, more probably early afternoon, in the case of my boy Chatham), ate huge meals, wore sumptuous clothes, walked the streets of London, relieved themselves, caught the common cold, laughed, cried, and grieved, and lived.

I already know this because I've read about it, and yet there is still a sort of dislocation in my head that makes me unable to grasp the fact "my people" (as I modestly call them) were both real and human.

For example: a few months ago I made an accidental discovery (and I've already blogged about the possible existence of the Research Fairy, so won't go into that here). I found this record on the finds.org.uk site, dedicated to recording archaeological finds of historical significance in the UK.

Why did this find stagger me so much? Because this, dear reader, is the 2nd Earl of Chatham’s personal seal. The one he affixed to private correspondence. And it dropped from his watch fob, probably sometime between 1783 and 1790, while he was visiting his mother at her Somerset house of Burton Pynsent, where it was found in 2006 — not, alas, by me, although every time I’ve been back there I’ve kept my eyes peeled in case, you know, he did it twice.

Think about it. I knew Burton Pynsent belonged to the Pitt family; I knew the 2nd Lord Chatham would have gone there many times. But here is concrete evidence that he was there, in person: that he was capable of losing things, just like anybody else. I imagine he was pretty annoyed when he found out he had lost it, too. It’s like a glimpse into a timewarp, just a blink of a moment in which the walls of time and space come crashing down.

I’ve had the same feeling so many times while researching John Chatham in particular. I think it’s because he’s virtually invisible in the history books, so to find any evidence of his physical existence is doubly disorientating. Like while visiting his house at Abington Hall, near Cambridge, now the headquarters of The Welding Institute (TWI). The estate has changed almost beyond recognition, covered with prefab offices, storerooms and laboratories, but walking through it was like being haunted by the past.

There’s not much of “his” house left, but with assistance I was able to piece John’s Abington together. The house’s ground floor still has a flavour of John’s grand early-19th century reception rooms, and the outside still bears the peeling whitewash “inflicted on it by your boy” (as TWI's records officer informed me, accusingly).

Then there's the excitement of seeing "my boy's" name plastered across the top of the entrance to Casemates Square in Gibraltar. He was Governor from 1820-35.

Or finding this bookplate in Gibraltar's Garrison Library:

It's like reaching across the centuries and brushing Chatham's sleeve with my fingers. Never more than a glimpse, but still, definitely a frisson of connection.

Sometimes, such a frisson is accompanied by embarrassment. I am often reminded, while consulting the archives, that I am essentially reading someone’s private correspondence. I’m sure Pitt the Elder would be horrified to know I would read the following line, written to his wife, Lady Hester, shortly after she had given birth to their third child: “How I long, now that you are out of the straw, to have you in the fragrant grass?” (National Archives Chatham MSS PRO 30/8/5 f 205) The historian always has something of the voyeur in him or her, but I still won’t be getting that image out of my head any time soon.

So yes: real. Not real in my head, but real in the flesh, two hundred years ago. I’ve stood over the Pitt family vault in Westminster Abbey and tried to come to terms with the fact that the people I have read so much about are there beneath my feet. I can’t do it. I’ve touched things that belonged to them — I’ve seen John’s own miniature of his wife, eaten lunch with his cutlery, walked his estates, and I even have a letter he wrote hanging on my wall — but for some reason I can’t get over this barrier. I can’t comprehend that, even though they are "my people", they will never completely belong to me.
Surely I’m not the only one?

(Note: This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on my own blog.

All photographs by me)

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Jacqueline Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She is currently working on the first ever biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham. "The Late Lord" will be published by Pen & Sword Books in January 2017. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/, and can be found on Twitter as https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.