Brockley

St Andrew, Brockley

Brockley village straddles the rather busy Bury to Glemsford road, but the church is away from all that, in an idyllic setting near Brockley Hall farm. You go down the lane to the farm, and the church appears in the fields above you. You cross a meadow to reach it, on rising ground all the time. It is a pleasant setting.

Above the lane, St Andrew rides the meadows of Brockley.

Externally, this is pretty much all of a medieval piece, and a dedicatory inscription to the donor, Richard Coppynge, can be found at the base of the tower.

There is a delightfully militant Anglo-catholic guidebook, and one of the claims it makes is that this church formerly had a central tower, as at Eyke. I could see no evidence for this, and Mortlock and Cautley fail to mention it. But a surviving 1838 sketch of the church seems to support the supposition.

The present tower, apart from the Victorian top, is late 15th century, about the same time as the timber-framed porch.

Through this, we step into a church which has been fairly rigorously Victorianised, but it is certainly not without charm or interest, for a number of features survive from earlier incarnations.

Most notable, perhaps, are the piscina drains set in window sills. These don't seem very exciting, but they are quite unusual, and they mark the places where altars were set in medieval times.

This may begin to give us a vision of the former liturgical life of this building. One imagines chantry altars set within the nave, and priests concelebrating Mass at separate altars. All finished with now, of course.

Looking east. Note the rood beam corbels either side of the chancel arch.

A nice touch - the medieval clappers.

The fine east window is a Victorian reconstruction, but looks rather well, I think. I also like the 19th century evangelists on the reredos below it.

Beneath the tower is a rather lovely souvenir of the medieval bell clappers; they were replaced in 1992, and now sit proudly on a wooden memorial, the words our duty done in belfry high now voiceless tongues at rest we lie above them.

A superb ogee-arched tomb recess sits in the south wall, and a most curious sight can be seen projecting westwards from high up on the east nave wall, each side of the chancel arch. They are corbels, and must have supported the rood beam, giving us an indication of how high it was.

A Victorian roodscreen was removed in 1986, and its wooden cross now hangs behind the pulpit.

This is a lovely church, which few people will have heard of, and even fewer visited. Suffolk has loads of churches like that, and everyone of them is worth the time and energy.

St Andrew, Brockley, is located to the west of the B1066 Bury to Glemsford road. I found it open.