Just when I think I’ve seen it all, Suffolk surprises me. Out of all the county’s churches, this was the one that people most often wrote to me about, urging me to go and visit it. There are very few churches in the east of the county that don’t have an entry on this site now, but I identified a skein of them, stretching from the northern outskirts of Ipswich out to Diss, where I could catch a train back to Ipswich. Gipping wasn’t one of them, but things didn’t quite go according to plan.

It was a gloomy day as I cycled out along the Henley road, the low clouds glowering over the damp air. A puncture at Coddenham didn’t help matters much, and once the enthusiasm of the churchwarden at Pettaugh had detained me for longer than I’d planned, a thin continual drizzle was penetrating my clothes, hair and face with its icy fingers. This made my photographs of the wrecked church at Mickfield more atmospheric, but it also loosened all the mud on the road left by the ploughing of the previous week. My bike wheels threw it up around me; I reassured myself that Mendlesham would be open, as it always is, since I was now in such a state that I was sure no keyholder would grant me access, looking as I did like a tramp who might make up a bed on the altar.

There was another thing too – I had found the climb out of Stonham Aspal a hard one, and knew it wasn’t the bike’s fault. There was beginning a dull ache in my head, and a burning in my throat. My chest felt like someone was standing on it. In fact, it was the start of the flu that would keep me in bed for the next four days. After Mendlesham, I had planned to head north, for Finningham, Westhorpe and all points to Diss, but as I stood in the high street holding my bike, I knew I wasn’t well enough.

I decided to head south west to Stowmarket, through the threads of lanes that wind around the Gipping valley. I could catch a train there. And so it was that I came within a shout of St Nicholas Chapel, and could not resist it.

You’ll notice that St Nicholas is styled a chapel. This is because it is not a parish church, and never has been.

The history of England’s medieval parish churches is complex enough, but suffice to say that they were built as Catholic parish churches before the Reformation, and translated directly into the new Church of England in the middle years of the 16th century. The imagery, style and iconography of St Nicholas will clearly demonstrate it to be pre-Reformation, but it was actually the private chapel of a Big House, Gipping Hall, home of the Tyrrells.

Gipping Hall once stood immediately to the east of the St Nicholas chapel, but it was demolished in the 1850s, and all that remains today is the wide pond, and a couple of outbuildings. You approach the tiny village along the narrow road to Old Newton, and then turn off along a farm track for about 100 metres. Not far from here, a spring rises, and the village takes its name from the river that it makes. Two lovely farmhouses stand to the left of the track, but already your eyes and breath will be caught by the stunning building to their right.

It is like a finely-crafted jewel. Forget the glum little tower at the west end – this was an unfortunate addition of the 17th century, presumably by a Tyrrell of the time. The rest is a superb example of late Perpendicular architecture; the flint-becrusted walls soar to heaven, and great expanses of glass shimmer in the late afternoon light. Once, the windows were full of stained glass images of Saints, but they were all destroyed, probably by 17th century puritans. Not William Dowsing, who never came here; but he was vicious in his treatment of the Tyrrell chapel at Stowmarket, and the fact he never came here suggests that he knew it had already been dealt with. At the time, it was still a private chapel (although he investigated these elsewhere) and the Tyrrells were still tainted by their recusancy, so it is a mystery.

What survived now fills the east window – the best are the grieving figures of St John and Mary the Mother of God, reset in their original position. The rood that once separated them has gone, but the glass between is sensitively arranged to suggest a cross.

Because the windows are so vast, there is a kind of greenhouse effect; from the outside, you can see right through the building, and within can be lighter than outside.

But before going in, you must take a tour of the outside. The flintwork is superb; the buttresses are punctuated with the iconography of the Tyrrell family, some of which has still not been certainly decoded.

Most notable is the Tyrrell knot, a three-bowed interlacing that looks like the kind of thing I used to make with my spirograph set when I was little. There is the interlocking heart of the Arundell family, into which the Tyrrells married, and the letters AMLA, almost certainly Ave Maria, Laetare, Alleluia! ('Hail Mary, rejoice, alleluia!') from the May anthem. Above the north door is written Pray for Sir Jamys Tirrell. Dame Anne his wyf.

Also on the north side is the extraordinary chaplain's quarters, like a 15th century house red brick grafted on.

It was in 1743 that St Nicholas became a public chapel, and an outstation within Old Newton parish. Today, it falls under the pastoral care of the Rector of Bacton.

I had assumed that a keyholder lived in the farmhouse beside the church, and I’ve since learned that this is the case; but I found the church open, and am told it is so every day. If the exterior speaks of late medieval glory, you will be delighted to find an interior that still retains much of its prayerbook atmosphere, from the time before the Oxford Movement resacramentalised the Church of England.

The furnishings are a simple, late 18th century affair, painted in a seemly manner in recent years. The glory of the inside is the awesome east window, where surviving glass from other windows is collected. There is much to see, including fragments of Saints and their emblems; but the greatest is the rood group. For my money, they are the best stained glass figures in Suffolk.

On either side of the east window are theatrical decorations, draped pillars that rise to the 15th century ceiling. They would seem curious in most medieval buildings, but in the 18th century they were common enough. The Victorians hated them, of course, and so few survive.

The font is easily dismissed, but its shape, on the eve of the Reformation, already speaks of the rumblings on the continent that would flower as the Renaissance; a flowering to which the Tyrrels would have an access unusual in this county.

There are no memorials; in fact, the Tyrrells are mostly remembered at Stowmarket, three miles away, where the Parish church contains some of Suffolk's best, including some intriguing 17th century survivals. It is possible that the benches in the north-west corner, which a re decorated by the Tyrrell knot, were brought here from Stowmarket when that church was restored in the 19th century.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all about Gipping is the sense of constant care, that there has always been a community here to look after it. But it has always been a tiny one; even at the time of the 1851 census of religious observance, when churchgoing in England was at its height, the congregation here only numbered 20. The officiating minister was the headmaster of Needham Market grammar school.

St Nicholas lifted my spirits, and I cycled off buoyed up by it, not realising that I had left my copy of Mortlock behind. Fortunately, the kind people in the house opposite rescued it for me, and looked after it until I could collect it.

Fighting the rising aches in my body, I headed on down the tiny lane that follows the infant Gipping into Stowmarket. Rooks fluttered upwards to land as I passed. For three miles, the lane wove its way along the side of the brook, crossing it once. I didn’t see a single other human being, let alone a car. I had forgotten how hilly it was around here, but the water led me onwards, cutting a path through the woods and fields. Beyond Stowmarket, it would leave me to my train; it would open out into the wide water meadows above Ipswich, before cutting into the industrial heart of the great town, becoming tidal, becoming the Orwell, and emptying its grey expanse into the wide North Sea.

But by then I would be too dosed with aspirin and whisky to think of it.

St Nicholas chapel, Gipping, is set in the maze of narrow lanes between Stowmarket and Mendlesham, but is easily found. Leave the A14 (or Stowmarket) on the A1120 through Stowupland, and a lane to Gipping is signposted just to the north of this village. Follow the lane for about two miles, and Gipping Church is signposted down a farm track on the right. I am assured that it is open every day.

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