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Pin Mill is a
favourite haunt of fashionable Ipswich;
you can sit in the Butt and Oyster
nursing a gin and tonic, looking out over
the yachts and pretending you own one.
Arthur Ransome set We didn't mean to
go to sea here. Chelmondiston is the
village above, and is a busy, pleasant
place: the name is pronounced with the
stress on the third syllable. Its church
is quite remarkable, though. Like many
along this coast, it was derelict by the
19th century, and was rebuilt by E.B.
Hakewill, a ponderous architect that I
always imagine working with the tip of
his tongue poking ever so slightly from
the corner of his mouth. Hakewill pretty
much rebuilt the entire church in the
1860s. He was very fond of low, north
aisles. He built them at nearby Brantham,
Rushmere and Shottisham, and he added one
here, too. However, one night in late
1944, a V2 rocket took a particular fancy
to Hakewill's work, and came in for a
closer look. The little church was almost
completely destroyed. Being close to other
villages, perhaps rebuilding was not a
priority, and it was not until 1951 that
Basil Hatcher was given the commission to
provide a replacement. You might imagine,
at such a date, that he would design
something in a jaunty Festival of Britain
style, but he did not. Later in the
decade, his would be the most significant
post-war Anglican church in Suffolk,
Ipswich St Francis, but this is a simple
essay in Suffolk Perpendicular. Cautley
was appalled; When you read his account
in Suffolk Churches and their
Treaures, you can almost hear him
red-faced and blustering. This is a bit
rich, considering he'd done the same
thing at Ipswich St Augustine himself 15
years earlier.
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But I rather like it.
Stepping inside to a feel of the Fifties, you are
confronted with a glorious array of propped
kneelers, giving a sense of a faith community in
possession. Although much is new, there are
survivals from Hakewill's church, and even from
the church before Hakewill. At first sight, you
might this includes the font, which is fairly
typically 14th Century, but in fact that was
Hakewill's as well. But the best work of all here
is the glass in the chancel. It is the 1960s work
of Francis Skeat, his only work in Suffolk.
  
 
The
east window is fairly traditional in content and
arrangement, rendered modern by Skeat's style. It
depicts the Crucifixion, flanked by two separate
scenes depicting Christ the Good Shepherd.
Interestingly, in both scenes it is the
Resurrected Christ we see. At the back of the
church is a memorial plaque, telling us that it
was given in 1961 by Major John Grove-White
in memory of his brother Alfred who was drowned
in the River Orwell 7th August 1905. This window
replaces a similar one inserted by his mother in
the churchwhich was on this site and which was
destroyed by enemy action on 10th December 1944. On
the south side of the chancel are the Summoning
of St Andrew by Christ, St Luke healing a child,
and the Three Marys at the Tomb.
| The 18th Century hour glass,
installed to make sure that Ministers'
sermons did not shortchange the customers
in the congregation, is still in situ
- or, at least, where situ would
have been. It is a very fine example. I
had a slightly spooky experience
revisiting this church in late 2008. I
had assumed, as almost always, that I was
alone in the church, and wandered around
carelessly scuffing my feet, clambering
on pews to get a better angle, and
humming tuneless selections from the
Chemical Brothers. It wasn't until I
wandered up into the chancel that I got
the brief frisson of discovering
that a hooded figure was sitting in the
old choir stalls. She was sketching an
arch on the north side of the chancel.
Obviously, I apologised profusely, but
she made absolutely no response. It
wasn't just that she didn't answer me -
she didn't even look at me. I walked
across her field of vision several times
to photograph the Skeat windows, but it
was if I was invisible.Was she deaf? But
no, because she would still have noticed
me, and made some response. I can only
imagine that she was some kind of local
character.
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