Holy Trinity Church, Barnstaple Holy Trinity Church, Barnstaple Holy Trinity is an Anglican parish church for Barnstaple in Devon. Dating from 1867 with an earlier tower from 1843-45, the church comes under the Diocese of Exeter and has been a Grade II* listed building since 1981. Holy Trinity is a typical Victorian era church built in 1867 by William White on the site of an earlier church designed in the 1840s by David Mackintosh of Exeter but which necessarily had to be rebuilt as its foundations were unsound. The four-stage tower with set-back buttresses is built in the Somerset style and pre-dates the main
Barnstaple Bay. The name is first recorded in the 10th century and is believed to derive from the Old English "bearde", meaning "battle-axe", and "stapol", meaning "pillar", referring to a post or pillar set up to mark a religious or administrative meeting place. The belief that the name derives from "staple" meaning "market", indicating that there was a market here from the foundation of the settlement, is incorrect, because the use of "staple" in that sense is not recorded in England before 1423. Barnstaple was formerly referred to as "Barum", from a contraction of the Latin form of the name (ad