I’d just had my bike serviced, and so on a grey day in February I hammered it out of Ipswich along the Henley Road. Through the lost parishes of Thurleston and Akenham I sped, into pleasant Henley itself, and then up the long haul of a hill into Coddenham. To protect my sensibilities from the suburban traffic, I was playing a Chemical Brothers CD on my headphones, but this seemed quite out of place when I got out into the countryside proper, and I took them off to blessed silence.

Coddenham has a reputation for being one of the poshest villages in Suffolk; within commuting distance of Ipswich for executives and businessmen, but beyond the reach of anyone ordinary. Despite this, the people in the shop seemed very friendly, and a poster in the window for village hall line-dancing sessions presented a side of the place I’d never imagined. It's curious, the insights you get from such things. A week later, I stood on the lower Shankill in Belfast opposite a vast UVF Protestant Resistance mural, and I noticed in the newsagents behind me a poster for crochet classes. A vision of Johnny ‘mad dog’ Adair and Ian Paisley working on a blanket together was immediate.

Coddenham is a very old village. The layout of the streets reflects this; there’s something not quite right about it. The blind corner opposite the shop was not meant for modern traffic, and the way the roads twist out of the village and into the fields seems stubborn, as if they do not want to conform to the needs of the modern world, but prefer to reflect something that was before, and is now gone. It may be that this is something to do with the fact that Coddenham was almost certainly the largest Roman settlement in Suffolk, at a time when Bury and Ipswich were tiny hamlets, and Lowestoft probably did not even exist.

A big clue that things were not always the way they are now is the 15th century porch on the side of St Mary. Instead of being perpendicular to the north aisle, as is usual, it is uniquely angled to face up the village street, at about sixty degrees to the north wall. At one time, the purpose of the street must have been simply to take the Faithful into the body of the church. Now, it approaches as before, but suddenly veers away wildly around the churchyard and down the hill. At one time, liturgical processions must have used it, but it isn’t clear if it was the Reformation that made the change, or a pressing need for villagers to get to Hemingstone in a hurry.

This was an important place on the eve of the Reformation. The clerestory is one of the most beautiful in Suffolk, particularly because it is not very long. It rises like battlements of lace, and the inscription reads orate pro animae Johannis Frenche et Margaret ('Pray for the souls of John and Margaret French'). At the east end of the north aisle is a gorgeous fat red-brick rood stair case, that obviously postdates the windows either side of it.

Wandering around to the east, I found the memorial to the 17th century Minister Matthias Candler. His firebrand Puritanism would have important consequences for Suffolk churchcrawlers. One of his parishioners was William Dowsing, who had a house in this village, although actually just over the border in Baylham parish. Dowsing learned to be a thorough-going protestant at the feet of Candler’s pulpit; in 1644, Dowsing would make a journey through Suffolk and Cambridgeshire on behalf of the Earl of Manchester, wrecking sacramental imagery in more than 250 churches. Candler died in 1663 while still Rector, which suggests that the Restoration of three years earlier had not been dramatic, or that Candler was a wily enough character to survive it.

I stepped through into a wide, urbanised nave, very much the product of a 19th century restoration under the watchful eyes of Richard Phipson. The 15th century brought glamorous aisles and the soaring clerestory; but this must have been a small church once, and the nave is now as wide as it is long. Beyond it, a vast 19th century chancel stretches so far that it doubles the length of the church; it was rebuilt in 1840, and then greatly extended in 1893 by the Anglo-catholics. It was clearly meant as a statement that sacramental liturgical practices were back. Candler and Dowsing must have turned in their graves.

Two other reflections of the high church enthusiasms of a century or so ago are two plaster reliefs set against the west wall. The one of Mary and John at the tomb of Christ is particularly fetching.

Another curiosity of the church is that the tower stands at the end of the north aisle; perhaps this is where the original church was. As you step inside, you find the former tower archway is blocked, but there is a little door set in it, and another arch set in the north west corner of the nave.

If, externally, the clerestory is breathtaking, the internal glory of St Mary is undoubtedly the roof. It is very late medieval, probably 15th century, but Mortlock thought it might be 16th century. It is an unstained double hammerbeam roof, not quite so steeply pitched as is common in Suffolk. Angels gaze down from the gloom.

There are plenty of hatchments, for those who like that kind of thing, mostly to the Bacon family, one of Suffolk's most significant landed families. They also have a number of memorials, and even a window designed by one of them, the Pre-Raphaelite Percy Bacon.

High out of reach in the top of the rood loft stair is a remarkable pre-Reformation relief of the crucifixion. Almost certainly, it was part of a larger piece, perhaps a reredos, and the angel with the chalice at the foot of the cross suggest the late medieval devotion to the Holy Blood. It is made of English alabaster, once a common object in an English church, but almost everywhere smashed up or sold off to the continent by 16th century hooligans. The colouring is modern, unfortunately. It was found walled up in the attic of a house in the village, and may very well have been removed from this chuch in the 1530s to rescue it from the fury of the Anglican reformers.

A notice below described the panels of the roodscreen dado, but they did not appear to be there. The roodscreen itself has gone; Mortlock, writing in the 1980s, observed that Cautley had seen it in pieces in the 1930s, but that he could not find it himself.

Well, I could. It is stacked up against the south wall of the tower, behind some old benches. If it has really been there for three-quarters of a century, I couldn’t say. There would seem little point in restoring it to its original position; the high altar is far enough away as it is, without obstructing the view even further.

I decided that I thought St Mary was a very nice church. I went outside, and discovered with some dismay that my back tyre was completely flat. Relieved that I was carrying a spare inner tube (I often forget) I turned the angular porch into a makeshift bicycle workshop, before setting off on the old Roman road to Pettaugh.

St Mary, Coddenham, is situated just to the north west of Ipswich. Most easily, it is approached from the A140, near to the junction with the A14. I've always found it open.

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