| |
|
 |
|
The villages in this part of
Suffolk are working villages, too far
from anywhere important, and too
agri-industrialised, for them to be
attractive to commuters. But the setting
of All Saints is delightful, set on a
slight rise with a stream along the edge
of the churchyard. You have to cross a
watersplash to reach it. The churchyard
has an abundance of 19th Century
gravestones, a reminder that the rural
population of East Anglia reached its
peak with the 1851 census, and has been
falling away ever since. Steps on the
south-eastern corner of the churchyard
lead you to a memorial to the 385th
Bombardment Group of the US 8th Air
Force. The tower is rather severe,
relieved slightly by the little spirelet.
The stairway acts as a buttress to to
south east corner. But the porch is a
delight, a Tudor brick one dressed in
flint, entirely in the style of the
wholly flint ones of a decade earlier. It
is reminscent of the red brick porch at
Ixworth Thorpe, a few miles to the west,
and Sam Mortlock found the same little
heads used as decoration on both,
suggesting that they were the work of the
same builder.
|
I
have never been very fortunate with visits to
this church. For many years, there was no
keyholder notice, but while the church is still
kept locked there are now three available keys.
When I went to get one of them, the nice lady was
already standing at the gate with it - she had
been in her garden and heard me telling Peter
Stephens that there was now a notice, and had
hurried inside to get the key.
You
step into a rather crowded nave, full of
interest. Turning to the east, you see a chancel
full of coloured light from what I think to be
quite the best AK Nicholson window in East
Anglia. it depicts the Risen Christ with
attendant angels, and at the bottom are a sower
in a field, and an angel reaping sheathes of
wheat, both figures carrying out duties which
must have seemed entirely familiar to locals as
late as 1926, when this window was installed. AK
Nicholson was the artist of the
apotheosis of Anglicanism in the 1920s. Here we
see the triumph of the Church of England before
its long, slow decline over the next five
decades.
At the east end of the north aisle
is the feature which will be of most interest to
many visitors, the memorial chapel to 385
Bombardment Group. The design was one of the last
works of the great H Munro Cautley as diocesan
architect, full at once of his intelligent
medievalism and the cinema deco which often
informs his work. The later window to the north
is by the Suffolk-based artist Surinder Warboys,
the upper part depicting the bombers flying out
across a Suffolk sky.
| One very unusual survival is
a medieval bench end of a mermaid, badly
damaged but still recognisable as such.
But perhaps the most singular feature of
All Saints, and one not easily missed, is
the imposing pulpit, one of the biggest
and squarest of its kind in Suffolk. It
is dated 1619 at the front of the tester,
and Sam Mortlock thinks it was probably
donated by William Fyrmage, a known
benefactor at the time and the probable
reason for the intials WF at the back.
Near it, a stall is carved with
blacksmith's tools. Nicholas
Fyrmage, another benefactor, has a most
curious early 17th Century charity board
in his honour, stretching out like an
unfurled scroll and now attached to the
chancel wall. The reason for its nature
is that it was originally displayed along
the roodbeam, a constant reminder to
locals.
|
|
 |
|
|
|