e-mail simon@suffolkchurches.co.uk

 

St Mary, Chilton, Sudbury

 

If you read about this church in any book from the early 19th century to the 1990s, it always mentions two things. Firstly, that the church is always locked, and secondly, that it is marooned out in the fields.

Well, it's still locked, although there is a keyholder. But the last decade has brought upon St Mary a change so dramatic that I do not think it can have been repeated anywhere else in the county. Access to the church used to be along a half mile or so of narrow track from the Waldingfield road. My wife remembers blackberrying here as a child some twenty-odd summers ago. She took her shoes off to wander barefoot in the hot dust; as she leant across the ditch to reach the fruit, a rat broke cover and ran across her feet.

Now, St Mary sits beside a stark service road into the Chilton Industrial Estate, one of Suffolk's biggest. Heavy lorries trundle past on their way to the pet food factory and tyre distribution plant.

Ironically, the church has been redundant for most of those summers, and is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Now, the only visitors, apart from the likes of me of course, come to tend the few graves, many of which are to former residents of Chilton Hall, away across the fields.

While I was there, a young couple brought their baby to visit the Hall graves, and so there is obviously continuity there.

Another grave that particularly caught my eye was to a child called Sparrow Brand Steed, the curious name perhaps a result of non-conformist parents deliberately giving a non-Christian first name.

Beside it, a woman weeps on the urn of Thomas Creaton, a former servant at the Hall.

  

St Mary's 16th century tower, beside the slightly earlier nave. The Perpendicular windows are delightfully outlined in brick.
 

Thomas Creaton.

Sparrow Brand Steed.

  

St Mary has a splendid red brick tower, one of the loveliest in Suffolk, built on the eve of the Reformation. The Victorians topped it with battlements and turrets, and it is a fine site through the industrial units from the Sudbury eastern bypass. Contemporary with it is the large chantry chapel to the Crane family to the north of the chancel, but the body of the church isn't much older, being good Suffolk Perpendicular.

Chancel and chantry chapel.

I visited this church on Boxing Day 2000, a hideous wind plunging the temperature below zero, and heralding tomorrow's snow. A sight of the interior would have been most welcoming, but the keyholder was out, as they so often are. Now that this church is no longer remote, it seems a shame that it can't be opened during the day.

  
 

If I had got inside, I would have seen the Crane monuments, which are said to be very good. So, I shall have to go back.

Instead, I plunged my fists into the depths of my pockets, escaping the rawness of the deepening afternoon, and leaned back towards the 21st century.

15th century east window to the Crane chantry.

St Mary, Chilton, is off of Waldingfield Road, Sudbury; a service road to the Industrial Estate comes off the roundabout beyond the former Jades nightclub. It is kept locked, with a keyholder at Hallgate, Waldingfield Road. This is the pink house near the entrance to Chilton Hall drive.