Corton

St Bartholomew, Corton

Over the last eighteen months, I had visited every single church along the Suffolk coast, except one. This was Corton. I had seen it often enough, its derelict tower a powerful ghost towards the sea from the A12, as that road thunders out of Norfolk. A couple of Suffolk parishes are further north; but Corton feels like the end of the world. Here, on the outermost tip of sprawling Lowestoft, among the holiday camps and waste disposal sites (why do they always put them so close together?) there is a feeling that we have stretched our sense of Suffolkness to an extreme.

Above: St Bartholomew across the fields.

Right: Time past. The sea approaches.

This, of course, is an illusion. Until 1974, the county boundary was a few miles further north, and the two churches of Hopton, as well as Belton and Gorleston, now a suburb of Great Yarmouth, were in Suffolk.

Somehow, though, up here, especially in winter, the colours fade; the land and the sea are all too often wreathed in frets, the wide open vastness of Norfolk is but a step away, and I felt no sense of belonging.

The main road out of Lowestoft cuts across heathland, straight and undulating, with the wild sea off to the east. Suddenly, it narrows, and Corton is a surreal mix of pretty flint cottages and barbed wire-surrounded holiday camps, which I cycled hurriedly past, and then out again, for the church is beyond the village.

St Bartholomew is haunting and lonely; there are many ruined churches along this coast, but this tower's gaping wounds, roughened by the salt sea winds, seem infinitely sombre and ancient. The tower dates from the 15th century, but the sea is only a hundred yards or less away now, so I suppose it will not be here forever. I had been told that the chancel had been restored in the 1870s as an Anglican parish church of appropriate size - for this was once a big church, and the nave, roofless and derelict only 10 years ago is now, apparently, a community hall.

The chancel contains a rare delight; a medieval gable cross, with an image of Our Lady on one side. There were once hundreds of these in Suffolk, but they were lost during the great Puritan destruction of 1644. Obviously the parish here was not Puritan enough - or perhaps they were just lazy. Whatever, it is the only one left in Suffolk.

The Rector's notice in the porch indicated that the church was kept open, and invited me to head round to the priest's door in the chancel. This, however, was locked.

The same sign listed three keyholders in the village I had just rushed through. And so, I headed back there.

A view through the ruined south west nave window, to the intriguing west end of the community hall.

And, through the same window, the view across to the north west nave window. Presumably, the font was somewhere here, once.

But two of them were out, and the other had moved. This was the Rector, whose sign I had just read. But the Rectory now stood empty; curtainless, its downstairs windows revealed dusty sheets and stacked up chairs. The wide Rectory lawn, where in former days a fete might have been held on a summer Saturday afternoon like this, was overgrown, the grass dank and littered. A lonely gate whacked occasionally against its jamb, as the slight breeze caught it.

I hung around the village for half an hour or so, in case either of the other two keyholders returned. But they didn't. So I abandoned Corton to its strangeness, knowing that I'll probably never come back.

St Bartholomew, Corton, is located to the north of Lowestoft, to the east of the A12, just short of the Norfolk border. I didn't find it open.