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This tiny
village was once a railway junction,
although you'd need a fairly vivid
imagination to picture it now. The Mid
Suffolk Light Railway ran through to the
north of the church, and in 1912 the
company put in a spur line to Debenham, the only town
anywhere near the route of the line,
albeit one of Suffolk's smallest. It was
an ill-conceived plan; they never
obtained a passenger licence for it, and
its usefulness for freight was somewhat
curtailed by their inability to bring it
closer to Debenham than a field a mile to
the north of the town. It absorbed a huge
amount of the company's capital, and was
probably partly responsible for the
Middy's demise in the 1950s. It is ironic
that the only substantial relic of the
railway is on this spur, the embankments
of a bridge over the B1077. All Saints has
survived much more successfully, of
course. It did fall victim to the
enthusiasms of Edward Hakewill in the
1870s, an architect I've never
particularly warmed to, although he made
a fairly decent stab at this one. This is
mainly because he resisted the temptation
to install a low north aisle, a
particular habit of his, and not an
endearing one I think. You can see the
results of it at places as diverse as Shottisham and Brantham. He did, however,
install the rather alarming triple lancet
east wall to the chancel.
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The
need for a new aisle here was obviated by the
presence of a very fine brickbuilt south aisle
and chapel, flush with the porch and with its own
entrance from it. It was built as a chantry
chapel for
the Garneys family in 1524, and was dedicated to
St John. The juxtaposition of red brick and flint
is always a charming one, and moreso than usual
here. On a sunny day it looks one of East
Anglia's best.
Within
the south porch is an interesting doorway, right
out at the very end of the Norman period before
it tips into Early English. You step through it
into a neat, clean interior, obviously very well
loved and cared for. There is a good example of a
13th century arcaded Purbeck marble font set on
19th Century legs, and indeed much of what you
see here dates from Hakewill's considerable
restoration. A particularly interesting medieval
survival is the set of consecration
crosses,
outlined in the cutaway 19th century plaster.
Many of these survive in East Anglia because with
walls made of flint rubble rather than stone it
was impossible for the Victorians to rake out the
old plaster as they did in many of England's
churches.
I was also fascinated by the
slabs of lead hanging on the north wall.
These date from a 1714 renovation of the
roof, and are inscribed with the names of
churchwardens and donors of the time. One
of them carries the name Garneys, a
reminder of continuity from two centuries
earlier.
The south
aisle is now furnished in a devotional
manner, albeit dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin rather than to St John now. It
once contained an intricate Garneys
brass, contemporary with the chapel,
which Cautley and Arthur Mee
both saw in the 1930s. T.M. Felgate
illustrates it in his Knights on
Suffolk Brasses of 1976, at which
time he records it as being 'loose in the
vestry'. I wonder where it is now.
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