Hollesley

All Saints, Hollesley

I approached Hollesley (pronounced Hoze-ley) from the direction of Boyton, coming out of the forest to find the heaths and marshes of the Bawdsey Peninsula before me. Below, the sea appeared for the first time that day, and the fortress between me and it was Hollesley Bay Prison Colony, erstwhile home of Hollesley's most famous former resident, the playwright Brendan Behan, and setting of much of his screamingly funny autobiography, Borstal Boy.

All Saints - terribly polite.

Beyond it was a fortress of an earlier age, one of the Martello towers that line the Suffolk coast from Aldeburgh southwards. It is set at the end of Shingle Street, a strange, remote community, site of a famous hushed-up incident in World War II. Supposedly, there was an accident, and hundreds of people died.

But every county has a story like this; the only real controversy, according to a local I spoke to, was that the RAF had used the pub for target practice. In any case, Shingle Street is more memorable to me for the wild party on the beach there the day after I got married in 1990.

After such excitement, Hollesley is a remarkably suburban place, and the biggest place on the peninsula, with a supermarket, school, and, until a year ago, two pubs. Many of the people work at the nearby prison.

All Saints is set in the middle of the village, just off the High Street, up a little rise. A house sits next to it in a cosy juxtaposition, its south wall decked in wisteria.

All Saints looks terribly polite in its churchyard, and the Victorians gave it a good seeing to. Curiously, when they knocked the wall through to build a north aisle, they found a medieval arcade hidden in the stonework - obviously, this church had been made smaller after the Reformation in the same way as nearby Bawdsey.

The tower is mid-15th century, with a little niche above the west door. Simon Cotton tells me that there were bequests for the tower in 1452 (of about £12) and 1465. A bequest was made for a bell in 1495. Mortlock reports Marian monograms on the battlements.

Going around to the south door, we find something most curious.

Set in the eastern buttress of the tower is a huge holy water stoup, quite out of scale with the door. It is the sort of thing that would have given the iconoclasts a fit of apoplexy, and had the Victorians rubbing their hands in delight.

The more you look at it, the more curious it seems. It isn't just the lip that is uneven, the whole base seems to have been set at an angle. The coving has two most curious points cut into it, that look like the tops of the recesses of flushwork.

And they almost certainly are, for what we have here is a Victorian confection. Cautley thought that the bowl might even have been a mortar, and the alcove has been hacked out of the core most crudely.

It pleased the Oxford Movement restorers to make the church even more medieval than it already was, even to the extent of suggesting to us that medieval Holleslians were all left-handed - it's on the wrong side of the door.

Apparently, there's another stoup inside, a genuine one. But I haven't seen it, for this church was locked, and the keyholders were out.

However, Fred Stentiford, a churchwarden, has contacted me since, to advise me that telephone numbers have now been added, to save people rushing around the village - more than this, they are attempting to make sure that the church is opened every day.

The stoup - see it, but don't believe it.

Even more than this, Mr Stentiford has given me a telephone number to ring if you have any problems getting the key.

Well, I am very much looking forward to going back, and seeing the replica bench ends the Victorians filled this place with. That sounds rather vulgar, perhaps, but Mortlock thought they were excellent, and he's a man of taste. One of them is a sciapod, based on that at Dennington.

So I cycled off in the direction of Alderton, vowing to come back this way. When I do, I'll update this entry.

All Saints, Hollesley, is in the middle of the village, just north of the B1083 Melton to Bawdsey road. It may be open; if not, keyholders are listed. In case of any problems, ring 01394 411469.