Aldham

St Mary, Aldham

You travel along the busy Hadleigh to Whatfield road, with its fearsome 90 degree bends. Just beyond a cluster of houses, you take a sudden turn to the right, on to a pretty track to Aldham Hall. Down through fruit trees you descend, until the walls become older, and there at the end are the farm buildings. Beyond them, is this pretty church.

St Mary on its ancient hilltop - although much of what you see is actually 19th century.

If the church is pretty, the view from it is doubly so - to the south, the land drops away alarmingly, into a valley full of sheep. This is lovely, and splendidly English. Nothing could be more peaceful. But beyond, the land rises to a dark sea of trees, the mysteriously named Wolves Wood, now an RSPB reserve. Looking along to the right, the other hilltop is where the Protestant preacher Roland Taylor was burned at the stake in the 1550s, a site of pilgrimage for his many American descendants - and, more unhappily, for extremist protestants. Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Ulster Unionists, was a recent visitor. One imagines the villagers gathered outside this church, watching the flames and smoke rise.

St Mary's cute round tower, an 1880 reconstruction - although the Roman bricks in the south-west corner of the nave probably predate this. You can just about make out a reused piece of carved Norman stone. Well, I can, but I took the picture.

We came here on one of those humid, overcast summer days, on our way to the Bildeston Beer Festival. My children scattered off to play hide and seek with their mother in the precipitous graveyard.

An elderly man was pottering about, looking at 19th century graves, so I apologised for my family (as you do). But he seemed genuinely pleased that they were running about like mad things. He was tracing his family, and had come down from Norfolk to look for a particular grave of an ancestor. And he'd found it. He was pretty pleased about that, too.

He was also following up a theory that his ancestor had been a Rector of this parish. His address had been Aldham Rectory. Did I have any idea how he could find out?

I suggested that the church might have a board of 'Rectors of this Parish'. Most do. These are a pleasant Victorianism, intended to overcome the 16th century breach by claiming a history of the CofE that extended back before the Reformation. We could go inside, and take a look.

And we did - the church was militantly open, the inner door wedged wide. We found the board - but the name wasn't there. So, the mystery remained unsolved.

This church was derelict by the mid 19th century, and underwent a fairly late restoration, in 1883. The tower was rebuilt, as was the south wall of the nave. The roofs were replaced, giving an overwhelmingly Victorian appearance - although Mortlock detected the Norman, and possibly Saxon, ancestor. The hill itself suggests a very early foundation, perhaps on a site of pagan worship.

The architect was W. M. Fawcett, and there was another restoration of the inside in the early 20th century. The resulting interior is one of those neat and shiny jobs that is certainly grand, and pleasant enough, but rather dated now. Our late 20th/early 21st Century spirituality seems to respond more to dusty, ancient interiors than to these Victorian ritualisations. But I had a sense of a church that is much loved, well-cared for, and used regularly.

A heraldic device? Or an unusual representation of Pentecost, with a rare lily crucifix above?

Instruments of the Passion, and the crown of Christ?

And it is not without its medieval survivals, a couple of which are fascinating. For a start, there is the chancel, with its original roof, some fine windows, and a piscina in the sanctuary. But best of all are two bench ends. These are unlike anything else I've seen in Suffolk, and their primitive quality suggests a local origin. The one to the west apparently shows a bear, or possibly a lion. My first impulse was that it was some kind of heraldic device, but on reflection I think differently. Note the shaved off object it holds in its mouth. And is the pattern emerging from beneath the head really fur? My son took one look at it and decided that the creature isn't eating the bird, but the bird is flying out of its mouth. Could it be a dove? And could the three objects issuing from beneath the head actually be tongues of fire? In which case, could this be some strange composition representing Pentecost, and the descent of the Holy Spirit?

In the spandrel above the bear, or whatever it is, there is a lily, the symbol of the Annunciation. But it is also a symbol of the crucifixion. It calls to mind the rare lily crucifixes, of which just two are known to survive in Suffolk, at Long Melford and Great Glemham. Could this be an unrecorded third?

The other bench end is probably easier to read. The crown is obvious enough. The star and crescent are familiar from representations of the crucifixion. The pike is a familiar instrument of the Passion.

And, if you look in the spandrel above, you'll see a crown of thorns, so this may well be a composition representing the Passion.

A third bench end, to the east, shows just a simple spiked tool, that looks as if it might have been used in thatching. So, what's it all about? It is a bit of a mystery, really.

And what of the font? This is mysterious, too. It appears to be Norman, but a second glance finds it too elegant, too finely detailed. The pillars are almost Classical in design, and the whole piece has a touch of the 18th century about it. Was it brought here from somewhere else in the 1880s? Or is it a Victorian recutting of a Norman predecessor?

Whatever, the revealed brickwork of the late medieval tower arch looks most fitting behind it. The doors are, presumably, part of the 1930s interior restoration - indeed, they have a touch of Cautley about them.

Curiosa and curiosa.

To see early 20th century Anglican triumphalism in all its hideous glory, step up into the chancel, and examine the reredos and flanking niches. It looks like something out of a French cathedral. I suppose that it is really quite good, with the kind of neatness one associates with 1930s stonework used here to highlight medievalist detail. On the other hand, one wonders what they can have been thinking of, to impose it on this pretty little country church.

Fortunately, the contemporary glass in the east window is very good, or else this confection would be rather embarassing. The wooden cross is not, presumably, what was intended by the designer. The stonework must have cost a fortune, and it is rather hard to imagine the same thing happening today, even if Stephen Dykes Bowers was coughing up for it.

Cathedral-style sanctuary at Aldham - what can they have been thinking of?

Post dating it by a couple of decades is a set of arms for Elizabeth II, unusual, and rather good. Very Festival of Britain.

Standing in the nave and looking east, the splendour of the reredos imposing itself on our view, it is hard to imagine the real glory that once was here. But John Nunn contacted me, to tell me about a will he has a copy of. In 1525, his ancestor Robert Clifford declared: I bequeath I will have the rood there upon the candlebeam set up higher and Mary & John and two new angels and the breast under the rood korvyn and when that is done I will have all this painted and guilt whatsoever the cost. I will have bought two standards of brass stand in the choir and I will my executors bestow therein 40/-. I will my executors shall buy four candlesticks of brass for the candlebeam, I give six kine unto the church of Aldham to keep my obit with as long as the world stand.

What does all this mean? Firstly, you have to remember that England was a devoutly Catholic country in 1525, and the fittings of the church were for the actions of the Catholic liturgy. In the late 15th century/early 16th century, all Suffolk churches had in place a rood. This was a representation of the crucifixion, set above the chancel arch. On one side of the cross always stood the Virgin Mary, and on the other side stood St John. Often, the wall behind was painted.

The rood either hung on the wall, or was supported by a beam. However, there was always a beam that ran below it for candles to be lit on. This was called the candlebeam, or rood beam. The candles were placed on it by individuals or gilds as part of the process of prayer - particularly prayer for the souls of the dead. A rood loft ran beside it for access, and the space beneath was infilled with a rood screen. To make the rood even more glorious, the roof above was panelled, and the panels were painted blue, with gold stars, and perhaps Marian monograms. This was called the canopy of honour, or more simply, the coving (rendered delightfully in Suffolk dialect as Korvyn above.)

Robert Clifford was paying for a simple rood to be made more glorious. He was going to have it placed higher, with a new canopy of honour. He was paying for brass candlesticks to replace wooden candlestocks.

Why? Simply, the medieval economy of grace depended upon the living praying for the dead, and the dead praying for the living. In donating glorious things to his church, Clifford was ensuring that he would be remembered. The roodscreen would have a dedicatory inscription with his name on. He was saying - I won't forget you, don't you forget me. Catholics still say these prayers, and believe them answered.

Memento of a more recent age.

The Catholic liturgy formalised prayers for the dead in the form of obit masses.These were said on the anniversary of someone's death in perpetuity. The proceeds of the sale of the six cows (kine) would be invested, probably in land to be rented, to pay a priest to say these masses - as long as the world shall stand; that is, for ever.

Unfortunately, 'for ever' didn't last very long. Prayers for the dead were declared illegal by the protestant reformers in the late 1530s. By 1547, every single rood in the land had been toppled and burned. The rood lofts were hacked down, along with many of the candle beams (although about ten beams survive in Suffolk) and most of the rood screens were also destroyed (about 50 survive in Suffolk).

Nothing of Robert Clifford's gifts survive at Aldham. All the gilt would have been stripped, the brass candlesticks melted down, and the proceeds sequestered by the King's commissioners. The collected glory of all the churches of England was squandered by Henry VIII on high living, and on the expensive and pointless siege of Boulogne. A sad thought.

We stepped outside, and I wished my genealogist acquaintance all the best, as he headed on for Whatfield. I looked out across the gentle valley, the sheep cropping their way slowly westward. I looked beyond to Wolves Wood, and the site of Roland Taylor's martyrdom.

I was hoping to get away with Naughton and Nedging before we reached Bildeston, so I descended the hillside to gather my family. The undergrowth was fragrant as I cut a swathe through it. I stopped to find out why, and discovered that it consisted largely of wild sorrel and wild thyme; in fact, the graveyard was full of the stuff. We gathered a few handfuls of sorrel, and ate them later that day, with fresh salmon and new potatoes.

St Mary, Aldham, is just to the north of the A1071 Ipswich to Sudbury road. Take the turnoff to Aldham at Whatfield near Hadleigh. The memorial to Roland Taylor is visible from the A1071 near here. I found the church open and welcoming.