It was the wettest day of the Autumn of 2002, which is saying something. We were on our way to Sudbury after spending the morning in Colchester. There had been times during the morning when I simply could not see my hand in front of my face, let alone any of the buildings of that fine Essex town. It was only as we headed back across the East Anglian border near Nayland that the rain stopped, and a few minutes later a cunning plan occured to me.

In this corner of Suffolk, there was only one Anglican church that I had not photographed, and I mentioned this casually to my chauffeuse. She took it as a challenge - "Let's find it then!" - and so we started to look for Leavenheath.

By which I mean the church, of course. I knew the parish well - or thought I did. The main Colchester to Sudbury road runs through it, and I must have done this same journey a hundred times. It was only when I started looking for St Matthew that I realised I hadn't ever really noticed Leavenheath before. There is no village centre, no main High Street leading off into shops and housing estates. There are modern houses, but they are on the road to Bures; otherwise, the whole place is nothing more than a scattering of gathered cottages and farmsteads. And there is a good reason for this; Leavenheath is not really a village, or even a parish, at all.

The Leven Heath, as it was, is a vast area of open land that spreads itself between Nayland, Polstead, Boxford and Bures. Apart from the A134, it is only dissected by narrow lanes, some of which get blocked sometimes by the sandy soil washed out of the fields in heavy weather. I assume that it was all used for grazing sheep until the late 18th century, when it remained one of the few unenclosed places in Suffolk. Not for much longer: enclosure brought settlement, and settlement brought the established church out of Stoke by Nayland, in which parish most of this place actually is.

At the cost of £400 9s 5d, (about £80,000 in today's money, a bargain then or now) the new church was constructed in red brick, and consecrated on the morning of the 13th September, 1836. It was a little towerless chapel, much in the contemporary style, with few of the trimmings that the growing sacramentalism of the next few decades would demand. Broadly speaking, it is the part of the present church to the left of the tower, although I think that the lovely white frontage, porch and buttressing must be later, for reasons that I will explain in a moment.

The architect was G R French, and an intriguing passage in White's 1844 Directory of Suffolk notes that it was built near the site of an old Quaker burial ground. Since such things were usually beside meeting houses, perhaps there was already a Friends' presence on the heath before the Anglicans came along.

The new church had the status of a chapel of ease to the mother church at Stoke by Nayland, but was provided with its own minister, the fiery evangelical Harold Curry, who, White tells us, had his own adjoining house - this must be the one to the rear of the site, now a private house. The minister was also provided with two acres of land, and a 3% return on £1,100 in stock.

By the time of the 1851 census of religious worship, the little chapel was maintaining morning and evening services, with an average attendance of 120 for the first and more than 200 for the second. It must have been a tight fit.

So much so that, in 1880, Mortlock tells us that the architects Satchell and Edwards were called in to extend the building. They built the splendid bell tower with a wide south aisle behind it, and extended the original church eastwards with the addition of a chancel. These are strongly in the Tudor style, even with the addition of wide Perpendicular windows, and so I think they must also have been responsible for the frontage now in place on the original church, with its porch, all of which is fully Tudor in style. For example, the lancet window above the entrance matches a double one in the south wall of the new chancel. The use of unnecessary buttressing would have been fully in keeping with the style of the 1880s. So, we may assume that the architects completely transformed this place.

So, where was it? We headed west from Nayland, looking at both sides of the road for a clue as to where the church might be. I fully expected to have to drive off into the middle of nowhere, but just when we had almost reached Assington, I saw it, right beside the road in a dip, surrounded and hidden by great chestnut trees. I must have driven past it so many times, but I had never noticed it before.

The little garden in front of the church is a paradise for conker-hunters. I had never seen such a density of the beautiful brown seeds in one place - they carpeted the wet ground like jewels. I have one of them on the desk in front of me as I write.

Today, this pleasant little building is in a joint parish with Stoke by Nayland. Although the fine church there is kept open, I hadn't expected this one to be, and it wasn't, and no keyholder was listed. So you might be dissuaded from trying to get inside. But something Mortlock tells me makes me think this would be a crying shame.

When the dead of the First World War were buried in military cemeteries in northern France, the temporary wooden crosses that marked their graves were sent home to their parishes. Often, these were displayed in the village church, perhaps with a photograph of the dead. They are terrible things to see - almost all of them were young men in their late teens and early twenties, and all of them must have been well-known to everyone else in the village.

Over the years, many of the crosses have disappeared, perhaps taken back by families, or discarded as an irrelevance. But St Matthew still contains six of them; only Old Melton, with seven, has more. And Leavenheath retains the photographs of the young men too.

In these dark days, they are a reminder of the horror of war, and should be a constant reminder to us that no good will come of it. On an earlier version of this entry, I deplored the fact that nobody knew about Leavenheath's crosses. However, I was really pleased to be contacted by Sheila Gordon, who tells me that they are still inside, and very much cared for - indeed, they have recently been moved from the west end to the war memorial on the north wall. The photographs are still with them.

Sheila tells me that visitors to St Matthew would be made most welcome. A key is available at the house behind the church, or you can ring her in advance at the number given below.

St Matthew, Leavenheath, is directly beside (but hidden from) the main Sudbury to Colchester road, just to the west of Nayland. It is locked without a keyholder notice, but the key is held by the house behind the church. Alternatively, you can ring Sheila Gordon in advance on 01206 263130

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