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It was early in the summer
of 2008, and for the third time in my
life I was attempting to visit all the
churches of the Saints in one bike ride.
As it would turn out, this would be the
first time I would actually get inside
all of them as well, but I was still
early on in the journey when I got to St
Lawrence, a church I fully expected to
find open. I had been looking forward to
coming back to this church for a long
time. Last time I was here in 1998, the
church was being got ready for a harvest
festival. At the time I said that they had made
it look very nice inside, I suppose; but
in all honesty, this is a rather shabby
building. The winds that blow from the
Waveney have dug their damp fingers into
the plaster; the whitewash is peeling,
the walls are bulging. I wonder what I
might find if I come back in twenty years
time? Surprisingly, half that time
had already passed, faster than I would
have wished it. But I had high hopes for
my return, because I knew that St
Lawrence had recently undergone a
thorough restoration.
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Seen
from the road, St Lawrence is a small, fairly
plain church. From the north, across the fields,
however, it rides its ridge dramatically; the
pines and cottages create a sense of an ancient
hilltop community. It was almost certainly the
site of a Roman station, protecting adjacent
Stone Street. The 15th century tower is stark,
its buttresses to the west seeming overlarge; the
brick parapet serves to accentuate its trimness.
The windows all seem to be Victorian, in a
Decorated style; Mortlock thought they might echo
what was there before, although the body of the
church is actually older than the Decorated
period.
| I stepped into the delight
of a crisp, beautiful building,
thoroughly rustic in character, but
obviously well-cared for and loved. I
hardly recognised it in contrast with the
building I had visited a decade
previously; for, while I had found its
shabbiness endearing, it had seemed
dangererously close to some kind of
abandonement. Nothing could be further
from the truth today. Pride
of place has been given to the excellent
royal arms of George II, restored and put
in place above the tower arch. The
Victorian tiles of the floor are vivid,
as if dust would not dare to settle, and
the clear light from the tracery of the
east window fills a tiny chancel which is
perfectly to scale.
A curiosity I had not
noticed before is the wooden beam above a
memorial on the south wall. It must have
come from elsewhere. Crudely inscribed on
it are the words Thomas? Peasant who
dyed ye 9th of March 1693. I wonder
what the story behind it is. Below it,
the memorial tells us that In a vault
near this place lies interred the remains
of a ten year old girl, Sarah Doggett,
who died in October 1819. There is a
space beneath her name of a further
child; but there were none.
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Simon Knott, July 2008
See also a general introduction to the Saints
  
  
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