Bawdsey

St Mary, Bawdsey

Bawdsey is the end of the line, whichever way you look at it. And there are essentially two ways of looking at it; most famously, from Felixstowe Ferry, on the far bank of the Deben, where walkers and weekend sailors sit outside the pubs gazing across to the pine forests and heathland of the Bawdsey Peninsula. The amazing Bawdsey Manor, a Victorian confection of Elizabethanisms, faces back, and was where radar was developed. You see it as you walk from Old Felixstowe, past the martello towers to the Ship Inn.

Or, you can look at Bawdsey from the peninsula itself, where two lonely roads come together at Alderton, and thread through to the Manor, where they stop.

In medieval times, Bawdsey was part of the Kingshaven, a group of harbours around the mouth of the Deben.

A stump and a chapel. Notice the way that the roofline on the tower is so much higher than the current church. A sanctus bell window is just below it.

Then, Bawdsey was on an island, a causeway connecting it to the mainland. But the sea has cut in over the last 500 years, the Deben has silted up and changed course dramatically, and only Bawdsey is left, beached on the Suffolk coast.

Actually, the village is barely separated from Alderton, and below are fine views of the sea, a couple of martello towers, etc. The whole place is riddled with machine gun emplacements and WWII defences.

Bawdsey is not only the place where radar was developed; it is where two national heroes who never lived here are immortalised, where a great Suffolk church has been reduced to a stump and chapel, where Guy Fawkes is responsible for a Victorian restoration, and where you'll find one of the most remarkable post-boxes in the world.

Bawdsey's story pivots around a man called Cuthbert Quilter, whose family had amassed a fortune. They rented Hintlesham Hall in Suffolk for ten years in the 1880s, and then bought, at auction, the manordom of Bawdsey. As Lord, he built Bawdsey Manor between 1886 and 1910.

Sir Cuthbert (as he now was) had been MP for Ipswich since the 1880s (this in the days before Ipswich went Labour after WWI, which it has been more or less ever since). He was, apparently, a man obsessed by real ale, and the only time he stood up in the house to speak it was on the subject of the purity of beer. He built up a number of independent Suffolk breweries, which, in the 1950s, were conveniently bought up lock, stock and barrel by Cobbold, who not unnaturally closed them all down.

The Quilter memorial.

Sir Cuthbert had such a high opinion of himself and his family, that he built an amazing mausoleum in Bawdsey churchyard. You step out of the west door of the church, and climb some steps to a vast chest tomb, with family names on it. Beyond that, more steps rise to an urn. If an eternal flame had been possible in the 1920s, he'd have had one of those, too. His family's names are inscribed on it. This is mildly interesting, I suppose. But one of his sons grew up to be the composer Roger Quilter, one of the finest songwriters of the 20th century, and, along with Peter Warlock, part of that generation before Benjamin Britten. But Quilter wasn't born in Suffolk, and he never lived here for long.

Funnily enough, the church contains a memorial to an even more famous person, who not only wasn't born in Suffolk and never lived here, she isn't even buried here. This is Nurse Edith Cavell, shot in Belgium in 1916. Her father WAS born here, but moved away before he married. But that's good enough for Suffolk.

The remains of the medieval church, set in the 17th century walls. The arcades were filled in with flint and brick, and the clerestorey broken down and replaced by a brick course. The whole lot was then rendered (now removed, fortunately).

The church was a grand perpendicular affair, in the manner of Blythburgh, Covehithe or Southwold. However, like Covehithe, it was derelicted after the Reformation, and a new, smaller church built in the ruins, probably in the late 17th century. Remarkably, the former arcades were infilled for the walls, and you can still see them in the outside walls today. The tower was in danger of collapse, and in the 1820s, the tiles of the church roof were replaced by thatch, to stop bits of stone breaking the tiles (it is hard to think of this as anything other than a short term measure.)

Unfortunately, a group of youths set off fireworks from the top of the tower on Guy Fawkes Night 1841, the thatch caught fire, and the church was completely gutted (the perils of Protestant triumphalism for you). The rebuilt church is basically a Victorian chapel with 17th century walls, a truncated tower (about two thirds was removed) and a font and pulpit unique to Suffolk..

The font is a most curious 18th century affair, tapering narrowly and then opening out, and resembling nothing so much as a bird bath. It goes most harmoniously with the Quilter memorial outside, and may well date from a reordering of the church under Sir Cuthbert's influence in the 1890s.

The pulpit consists of a frame of banisters, and probably dates from the 1890s, although some early 20th century photographs show it faced, without the banisters visible.

The Bawdsey bird bath - I mean, font. Most unusual.

The Bawdsey bird cage - I mean, pulpit. Most unusual.

The church also contains on display a piece of medieval embroidery, possibly from a cope, that was worked in the 19th century into an altar frontal. It is believed to have come from the chapel at Bawdsey Manor, and may have been obtained by the Quilters in Belgium.

Otherwise, this is a rather grim building inside; and not surprising, given the small windows and the thunderstorm outside. It isn't helped by the reinvention of the church in the 1950s as 'the RAF church'. Union Flag's don't suit parish churches, and the sooner that the Church of England realises that their presence is quite out of step with the contemporary spiritual imagination, the better.

St Mary. Grim.

I waited for the storm to die down, and then stepped outside through the west door under the tower. As I walked towards the Quilter memorial to photograph it, a deer broke cover beneath my feet, and ran for the woods. I nearly died.

And the post box? Nearby, the former post office still has in its wall the only surviving Edward VIII wall-mounted letter box in the world.

St Mary, Bawdsey, is right at the end of the B1083 from Woodbridge. I have never found it locked.

My thanks to Valerie Langfield for her help with this entry.