This Anglican church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is built in Victorian gothic stone ‘English Country Church’ style. It is the only church of this design in Malta and is one of the early buildings in Sliema. It was completed in mid 19th century for the convenience of British servicemen and other British settlers and their families in Malta. Until then Sliema was sparsely populated but has now grown into a ‘posh’ locality with modern very expensive buildings and apartment blocks.
There was another Anglican chapel in Sliema. In the early days of its existence, Maltese people living in the area were offered one shilling – in Maltese ‘xelin’ pronounced ‘shell-ijn’ – to entice them to attend services provided in this chapel. One shilling (now replaced by the 5 pence) was quite good money at the time. I presume that some of the poor folk ( there were many of these at the time) must have accepted the offer, attended the service (if they were conducted in English they would have understood nothing anyway because illiteracy was common among the poorer class) and continued on their catholic life as if nothing happened. For this reason Sliema people were nicknamed ‘tax-xelin’ (‘of the shilling’ or ‘the shilling people’) which nickname survives up to this day.
