St Thomas, Ipswich

St Thomas rears its white brick tower in the style of Suffolk Perpendicular. Note the mobile phone aerials.

The undistinguished brick exterior conceals a famous architect, and an outstanding, devotional interior. Cachemaille Day's only major work in Suffolk maintains an Anglo-catholic presence in the largely non-conformist west side of town.

Around it, the Victorian terraces and 1930s semi's are anonymously urban; but St Thomas has a curious Scandanavian edge to its otherwise Suffolk perpendicular shape. One often finds this hint in the late 1930s. The Second World War seems to have brought it to an end.

The brick tower has mobile phone antennae on all faces. This seems a most sensible revenue earner, and one assumes that other parishes are following suit. A plaque in the south wall commemorates the donor of the land; but not, strangely enough, the architect. The new parish was mostly formerly part of All Saints parish, but also some of it came from Bramford.

The foundation stone memorial of 1937. A Ransome gave the land.

The interior is a surprise. It is of great character and beauty. The white vaulted ceiling, the narrow lancet lights above the long altar, the wide aisles with their Stations of the Cross, all conspire to create a sense of being part of a larger building, perhaps in the crypt of a great cathedral. The week after my visit I was at Sacre Coeur in Paris, and instantly recognised that this church would be quite at home as one of the underground chapels there.

St Thomas is, of course, quite different in style to its almost exact contemporary across time, All Hallows. There, Cautley used Art Deco to fit a similarly inspired version of Suffolk Perpendicular.

But perhaps Art Deco was already old, and this was the coming thing. St George at Chesterton, in Cambridge, was also built the same year, and is in a quite unashamedly Scandinavian style. St Thomas' clean lines and open spaces speak of this, and perhaps a teensiest hint of the Romanesque was also on Cachemaille Day's agenda.

Like All Hallows, St Thomas contains one medieval survival; this is the bell from the disused church at Knettishall, up on the Norfolk border.

This is one of the few Anglican churches in Suffolk still to use incense on a regular basis; and the thurible hangs beside the altar, so we may assume that this is done without the slight sense of embarassment I've come across elsewhere.

A side chapel offers opportunities for private prayer, and all in all the parish should be extremely proud of this gorgeous little jewel.

Looking east, beyond the nave altar, to the sanctuary.

The south arcade, with Stations of the Cross.

St Thomas is located on Bramford Lane, Ipswich, just beyond the railway bridge. I found it open.