Lawshall

All Saints, Lawshall

Remember being young? That complete lack of responsibility that seems as though it might last for ever? But then something happens, to remind you that the clock is ticking away, and that respectability lurks around the corner. In 1986, my friend Mary did something that sent a frisson of mortality through her friends. She bought a house. She was the first person I knew of my age to do so, and she bought it in this pleasant village between Bury and Sudbury. So I got to know Lawshall quite well then, and I still associate it with looming responsibility.

But along with responsibility comes much else; which more than compensates, as we will see.

As grand as it gets, really; the fifteenth century tower and nave behind, with Butterfield's 19th century chancel in front. There you go, Les, a proper church. (Photo by Alan Thurkettle).

The narrow lane that leads down from Bury, through Nowton and Hawstead, may once have been the main road from Bury to the south. It swerves and rolls through the tightly packed fields, and only local people seem to use it, hurtling at breakneck speed towards the impossible corners.

Before the violent fracture of the Reformation, All Saints was where the Catholic priests of the parish ministered, of course. Unusually for Suffolk, Catholic worship was maintained in this village throughout most of the penal years at Coldham Hall, and Lawshall is still home to Suffolk's oldest Catholic church, Our Lady and St Joseph. It is a humble affair compared to All Saints; but is host to the larger congregation, these days.

But it is to All Saints that we climb now, up the mound from the road, and through the sylvan graveyard. The church has much in common with Sudbury St Peter, ten miles away. It was almost completely rebuilt in the mid-fifteeenth century on the profits of the cloth industry, and became a vast preaching house after the Reformation.

Above: Jacquie and Mary in the south aisle, 1986.

Right: Austere yet beautiful. Butterfield left the Puritan ambience of the nave fairly untouched.

Then, in the mid-19th century, it was restored in the Anglo-catholic style by the great William Butterfield, who, as well as St Peter and Lawshall, carried out restorations at Bacton, Sudbury St Gregory and Ipswich St Mary at Stoke.

The clerestoried south side, above the street, is spectacular. Few Suffolk churches look so grand.

I still remember stepping into this church for the first time, some fifteen years ago. It was early Spring, and the day was cloudless. The church was cold, the woodwork pale with the patina of more than a century of Suffolk winters, and Butterfield's thoroughly Victorian chancel punctuated by shafts of thin light. The sense of continuity was palpable.

When I was preparing this entry, I remembered taking some photos here back in 1986. I don't want to boast that I was a more enthusiastic photographer in those days or anything, but tracking them down in the mountain of photo albums took the best part of an evening.

Turning the pages of an album I hadn't opened in more than ten years became like separating layers of memory, the compressed stratification of increasing distance. The plastic pages stuck together, and as I peeled them apart, I never knew what I would find. It reminded me of those old polaroid cameras, where you used to have to count to sixty before, breathless with anticipation, ripping the cover off of the photo to see how it had come out. These fifteen year old photos became like that, like new photos, unfamiliar again after many years wait.

Looking west, towards the painted font (and gas canister).

The Johannes Van Mesdag memorial.

And then, suddenly, there they were, precious jewels from the past. In one of them, of the south aisle, Mary is standing with Jacquie, who would later become my wife. The moment is held there forever, like a seed in amber. And later, Mary would get married, and have a son, and we would be his Godparents, and so on. And so, the cycle continues.

Is it just this sentiment that now makes me admire the the way the font and angels are coloured? I'm sure that some throw up their hands in horror at this, but I think it looks lovely.

Don't miss the glazed tile memorial to Johannes Van Mevdag beside the tower arch. The chancel is textbook Tractarian - indeed, one might describe it as a Camden Society pattern book.

Fifteen years later, married, with a mortgage, two children and a demanding cat, I find myself back here. Has it changed? Who can tell. For fifteen years, you'd need a long memory.

But that's not the point, anyway. Churches that don't change are dying. What is more important is the sense of continuity, that quiet and enduring beat of the heart.

High above the village street, one of the least known of the cloth churches. (Photo by Alan Thurkettle).

All Saints, Lawshall, is in the village high street just to the west of the A134 Bury to Sudbury road. I've never found it locked.

Please note that two of the photographs are by Alan Thurkettle, and retain his copyright.