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St Mary's chapel was originally an
outpost of the main church of All Saints, half a mile away at Little Wenham. But the mother church now sits silent and
alone out in the fields, and St Mary is at the heart of
one of Suffolk's biggest, busiest villages with more than
3,000 people. Which just goes to show, I suppose, how
times change, and how some things remain.
St
Mary from the west, on its steep bank. The main
road is just to the right. (photo by Alan
Thurkettle).
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Mortlock found
the core of a Norman church here; but, as he
says, pretty much all that remains on view is the
result of the successive 14th and 15th century
rebuildings, making this a grand Perpendicular
affair, with Decorated chancel. The church
sits above the busy road through the village, and
it has cut down over the centuries to leave the
church high on a bank above it. However, the
uneven churchyard suggests that this may also be
the result of imported earth to renew burial
grounds, something often attributed to hilltop
churches, but actually quite rarely found.
St Mary was high in another
way, for this was one of the county's Anglo-catholic
shrines. Suffolk is a notoriously Low Church
county, but here we find a faith community that
successfully combined High Church
tradition with its role as a centre of Parish
life, sacred and profane. Today, as churchwarden
Christopher Yule informs me, it professes an
inclusive churchmanship where the full width of
Anglicanism is made welcome.
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You step inside to a devotional
interior; it was clearly much revamped by the Victorians,
but has been beautified tenderly since. There is a
feeling of light from the great 15th century windows, and
of colour from the devotional art that graces the
building.
| Roy Tricker, in his
fascinating Suffolk Churches Ancient and
Modern, records the successive waves of Anglo-catholic
enthusiasm that have left us with this treasure
house. The Parish priest
for more than forty years from the 1870s was
Father Johnson. His are the angels in the chancel
roof, the rood beam and rood with attendant figures, all of which
were carved in Oberammergau. He also bought and
installed the Flemish reredos; when he died, the south aisle was
converted into the Chapel of St Edmund in his
memory, with glass by F.C. Eden.
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Looking
east, towards Father Johnson's rood and reredos. (photo by Alan
Thurkettle).
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He had also owned a set of Stations of
the Cross, but he had not been brave or foolish enough to
install them in the church, preparing instead an oratory
in the Vicarage. They have an exceptionally fascinating
history for Suffolk Anglo-catholic watchers, for they are
supposedly the very same Stations that were in the
controversial Convent at Claydon in the 1850s.
The
reredos. (photo
by Alan Thurkettle).
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The rood.
(photo by
Alan Thurkettle).
This Convent, under the
pastoral oversight of the remarkable George
Drury, was on more than one occasion attacked by
a mob of furious protestants; you can read more
about it on the entries for Claydon and Akenham.
His successor, Father
Robertson, seeing that the time was right, moved
the Stations into the church, where their
pedigree added a frisson to their 19th Century
sentimentalism. Later, they were replaced with
those in the church today by Father Denis Pearce.
I wonder what happened to them.
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The statues are colourful without being
garish, accentuated by the simplicity of this entirely
rural ambience. It all provides an interesting comparison
with nearby Stratford St Mary,
showing that it was possible for the Victorians
to resacramentalise a medieval interior without wrecking
it.
This village has no connection with Capel St Andrew, 20 miles away in the marshes. When Suffolk
people say Capel, they mean this one.
St Mary, Capel St
Mary, is located to the west of the A12, just south of
Ipswich. I found it open, and am advised that it is
always so in daylight hours.
Please note that the
photographs on this entry are copyright of Alan
Thurkettle.
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