Boxted

All Saints, Boxted

I cycled along the Glem Valley from Hartest, looking for this church. Trees thickened, until the road was lined with woodland as much as fields. A sign pointed off eastwards: Boxted Church 1/4 mile. Well, let me say at once that it was the longest quarter of a mile I've ever cycled, steeply uphill and out into the countryside again. The church is hidden by trees, and the lane up to it comes as a surprise, at a corner. The setting is typical west Suffolk - it just isn't like this nearer the coast.

Despite its location, All Saints is one of the most visited churches in Suffolk. But from the outside it looks strange, for to the north side of this pretty medieval church is a large, boxy redbrick aisle and chapel, with few windows, and the curious smokestack of a chimney rising from one corner. Flint in the walls suggests that there was a previous north aisle here. What on earth has happened?

It is the work of the Poley family, Lords of the Manor. At the moment of swapping time for eternity, they have become frozen in time here. If we go inside, we can see them.

One criticism this site receives is that it can sometimes be a bit negative about grand monuments. In truth, I tend to find them rather vulgar, particularly those at Helmingham, for instance. Now, I realise that this means I probably won't get invited for tea by Lady Tollemache, and I think the ones at Hengrave and Framlingham are less so, but I still resent the way that, from the 16th century onwards, our churches were usurped for a show of family power. Of course, there were grand memorials before the Reformation, particularly in brass. But these seem to have retained a sense of piety, an acknowledgement of the family's participation in the economy of grace, as well as that of land and money.

Boxted's handsome tower. Notice the small niches low down on the west wall, and the little chimney on the adjacent north aisle.

All their own work - the Poleys make their mark on All Saints.

Hengrave became a mausoleum for a recusant Catholic family, but Helmingham and Framlingham continued as Parish churches after the Reformation. And so did Boxted. But Boxted is slightly different.

The entrance from the chancel into the Poley mausoleum.

What makes Boxted remarkable is that the family that glorified itself here, the Poleys, did so rather late, and in the late 17th and early 18th centuries seem to have attempted to recreate a 16th century mausoleum church by building a fake pre-Reformation chantry chapel.

Why did they do this? Probably, to try and make it look as though they were a more established family than they might have appeared otherwise.

So they built the north chapel to the chancel, certainly the only one built in the whole of Suffolk in either of those centuries.

Probably, the attempt to make it look like an ex-chantry chapel is based on the same (but genuine) thing at nearby Somerton.

At this time, antiquarians were beginning to rediscover a fascination with the past; late 16th and 17th century church architecture normally reaffirms and celebrates the Reformation and its break with the past.

At the Reformation, chantry chapels often became family mausoleums, and Suffolk has countless examples of this, most famously Kedington and Dennington. So, the Poleys created their own.

Apart from the extensive late 17th/early 18th century work, this church was thoroughly restored again during the 19th century. There's never been a shortage of money here. Virtually all the woodwork is 19th century, although the pulpit is older, and so is the chancel roof.

William and Alice Poley wait patiently in polished wood for Judgement Day.

From the 16th century is Boxted's earliest tomb, on the south side of the chancel. This is most striking, and it is only when you get up close that you see the jet black effigies are not marble at all, but wood. The oak has blackened with age. This is a rare revival of the wooden effigies popular in the 13th century, and found in Suffolk at Heveningham and Bures. This one is to William and Alice Poley, and was made after 1587.

The chancel floor is paved in ledger stones for various Poleys - I've never seen so many in the same place before.

To the south, of course, is the Poley mausoleum itself, and the alarming statues date from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The Poleys certainly thought well of themselves.

Sir John (died 1638) swaggers confidently in his effigy of 1680. The artist is thought to be John Bushnell.

his wife Abigail, who died in 1652, immortalised here in 1725. Both these statues are made of alabaster or so I am reliably informed..

The opening above the chancel arch seems an echo of the one at Polstead, and is intriguing. Something to do with the rood, perhaps? Well, no. It was only put in in the 1890s, at the same time as the medieval canopy of honour was destroyed - an extraordinary act at so late a date, and one that can only be put down to the local Big House getting its own way.

Looking east. The openings and frame above the chancel arch are modern.

Even if it were not for the Poleys, this is an interesting church in a lovely setting.

There is an excellent modern east window of the post-resurrection Christ, vaguely Festival of Britain, although it is the rabbits at his feet that we notice. It is the most modern Poley memorial in the church, and worthier than most of the others.

The east memorial window for Hugh Weller-Poley, a pilot who died in 1942 at the age of 20.

This is the favourite Suffolk church of many people. But not for me. There is little sense of the numinous here, and the Poleys' work removes this building from the spiritual and meditative context in which it was built. Continuity was fractured. Is this a pity? Probably not. Here is an important document of one landed family's attempt to immortalise and glorify itself, and is worth seeing for that alone.

All Saints, Boxted, is just off the B1066 Bury to Glemsford road, to the south of Hartest. I found it open.