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St George, Bradfield St George

  Lost in the lonely hills to the south east of Bury, we have here a noble prospect, a hill top tower raising its head to heaven. It is said that you can see 16 other towers from the top of it. You certainly get a fine view of this one from the busy Bury to Sudbury road, but three miles later you find yourself very much in the outback.

St George, secluded this close up, lifts its head to heaven.

   A field in this parish had the medieval name Hellesdun, and is one of the sites suggested as that of the martyrdom of St Edmund, which happened at a place of that name. To be honest, Hoxne still seems more likely, but there is also a Sutton here, the name of the place where the body was taken, and Hoxne has never satisfactorily come up with one of those.

Curiously, after following the landmark tower for such a distance, I arrived within spitting distance and found that I'd lost it.

After cycling backwards and forwards up the lane for a few minutes, however, I discovered a narrow entrance between two tree-filled gardens, and a narrow track took me almost to the south porch of St George.

When you get there, it isn't a huge building at all, but quite homely, like its neighbour Little Whelnetham.

That 15th century tower is impressive though, lifting to heaven.

Unusually, it has a large dedicatory inscription at ground level, picked out in black flint in the stonework on the two westerly buttresses. Her begynnyth John Bacon owthe of the fundacyon Jhu pserve him It seems to say, John Bacon being the donor in question.

The graveyard here is a wildlife sanctuary, with open fields beyond.

A light clerestory came with the north aisle, but Mortlock thought the rest of the building much earlier, probably Norman. In any case, there is a great sense of continuity, although perhaps the late medieval glory of the Perpendicular rules over all.

I have visited this church several times over the years, and have never once found it locked. Despite not being historically or architecturally very significant, it is a delight to visit, and has become one of my favourite Suffolk churches. On this occasion, I stepped through the doorway into the familiar, bright interior, the high windows flooding the nave with light.

 

The buttress inscriptions to donor John Bacon, north (left) and south (above).

This is a very well done 19th century interior, but not without the memory of the more distant past.

Two benches in the north aisle reveal it. One appears to be a flying dog, but is almost certainly the flying lion evangelistic symbol of St Mark.

Flying dog - or, more likely, St Mark. Click to enlarge. Green man? Or, more likely, Scandal? Click to enlarge.

Looking east.

   The other one I had never noticed before, until I was accompanied by the famous Dr Digi on a recent visit. He spotted it immediately. One of the poppyheads has a face in it with a protruding tongue. It might be a green man, but it might more likely be the figure of Scandal, found in exactly the same way across the county at Blythburgh.

You can see images of these two bench ends above - click on them to enlarge them.

Also in the north aisle is a splendid funeral bier. We tend to think of these as ancient as well, but of course they are mainly 19th and 20th century. Many were in use well into living memory. A few in Suffolk still are.

Past and present collude delightfully; a 20th century carved image of St George stands in a medieval niche flanking the chancel arch, and the glorious reredos is the best of its kind in the county.

Early in the 16th century the nave was reroofed, possibly in conjunction with the building of the clerestory.

 

St George in the niche.

Late 19th century reredos - one of Suffolk's best.

I stepped outside again. This was the parish that Adrian Bell wrote about as Benfield St George in his masterpiece Corduroy, the single best evocation of Suffolk rural life this century. Not far from here is Bradfield Wood, an ancient woodland superbly maintained by the Suffolk Trust for Nature Conservation. There is a silence there that we find rarely these days in the southern half of England, so close are we so often to major roads. In this area, that unnoticed background noise falls away, birdsong and windrush rises imperceptibly, and here in Bradfield there is a sense of things beyond the present, beyond the material.

St George, Bradfield St George, is located about three miles to the east of the A134 Bury to Sudbury road. Turn off to Little Whelnetham just south of Bury, and keep going. I've always found it open.