Mellis

St Mary, Mellis

Mellis is one of several villages in north Suffolk that are scattered around a wide, open common. The one at Mellis is the biggest of all of them. At one end, the Norwich to London railway line cuts a swathe, its high speed trains slicing through every twenty minutes or so. A furniture factory was built beside it, and there was a junction here, with the branch line to Eye heading off through Yaxley. All finished with now, I'm afraid; the former railway buildings are all in use for other purposes, and the trains no longer stop here. The factory lies abandoned, and only the Railway Hotel still speaks of a former age.

The Aztec temple at Cuezecelotl - no, only joking. It's St Mary at Mellis - odd, isn't it?

Without a map or a helpful local, you're unlikely to find the church. Even I was heading up the road to Burgate before I looked more closely at my trust OS. The problem is that nearby Burgate church stands tall and proud, but Mellis lost its tower in 1730.

The church is at the other end of the common to the industrial bit, set back among old cottages, and looking very pretty, if slightly unorthodox. The two buttresses at the west end are obviously built of old tower rubble, and are rather naturalistic. The collapse seems to have stirred the parish into action, a rare thing for the Church of England in the mid-18th century, because there are other repairs from around the same time, including two further buttresses, this time of brick, at the east end as well. The squaring off of the porch only accentuates the curious overall feeling that the church is, in fact, melting.

Elegant and beautiful. The Victorians repainted it, and you'd have to be a recalcitrant old medievalist, Cautley for instance, not to forgive them.

The coat of arms inside is for Charles I, which is a touch ironic considering something that happened outside on the common, which we'll come to in a minute.

The Victorians repainted the rood screen, and it is undoubtedly grand and lovely. There is a scattering of medieval glass, and the 18th century restoration seems to have dissuaded them from messing the place up too much.

Everything is neat and tidy, and the church feels well used and loved. I liked it a lot.

Stepping outside into the tight little churchyard, I thought how peaceful it was. Serene, even. But then from the other side of the common came the freeeeeeeesfroooooong of an express hurtling relentlessly towards London, which brought me to my senses.

The wide common is now under the management of the Suffolk Trust for Nature Conservation, who are trying to return it to its original state after decades of neglect.

This involves ensuring that it is grazed appropriately, and that invading plants are removed before becoming established (this isn't interfering with nature, incidentally, since it normally involves excising pampas grass and rhododendrons).

The common is most famous, perhaps, for being where Suffolk sustained its only casualties in the Civil War. During a muster, a gun went off by accident, and two volunteers were killed. Not a single shot was fired in anger in Suffolk. The only Royalist stronghold, Lowestoft (trust them to be different) gave up without a fight as soon as they heard Cromwell was on his way. Given what happened here, that's probably just as well.

St Mary, Mellis, is located on the common in this village which is just to the west of the A140, south of Diss. I found it open.