St Michael, Rendham

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Set in the floor in the centre of the nave is one of Suffolk's only two surviving chalice brasses. The other one is on the far side of the county at Gazeley. This was a fashion in the years immediately before the Reformation as a way of commemorating priests, with a depiction above the memorial inscription of a chalice, sometimes with a host, though not here at Rendham. The inscription here is in English, and reads Here lyeth Thomas Kyng sutyme vicar of this churche who died XXVI daye Aprile ADo MCCCCCXXIII. The next century and a half would be a rocky road for the English church, but it was presumably with a sense of relief that the Charles II royal arms were installed here in the 1660s. God Save The King, reads the banner. About twenty five years ago I was chatting with one of the churchwardens here, who was tidying up the small local museum at the west end of the nave. There's another at Sweffling, and she told me that there was still a great rivalry between the two villages, and occasionally a little ill-feeling. When I raised my eyebrows, she explained that this stemmed back to the Civil War. Sweffling had been enthusiastically parliamentarian, but Rendham, unusually for Suffolk, supported the King. She felt that you could still sense this difference in the two churches.

Visitors to the Roman section of the British Museum will have seen the head of the Emperor Claudius which may originally have come from his statue in the Temple of Claudius at Camulodonum, modern Colchester. There are replicas in the museums at Ipswich and Colchester, but the head itself was fished out of the river here at Rendham, just to the south of the church. A display here records its discovery in photographs and newspaper cuttings from the time. The churchwarden told me there were plans to have a replica here as well, but she thought this was a terrible idea. "He was an awful man", she said. "He killed so many Christians. It wouldn't be at all appropriate." She was very firm about it. The traditional story went that the head was removed by the Iceni and Trinovantes hordes who had attacked Camulodonum with Boudicca in AD87, and was then used as a football as they headed home in the triumph of victory to their camps in Suffolk and Norfolk. This part seems unlikely, as a head made of bronze would not be easy on the feet. However, it was at Rendham that the head went into the river and was lost. When I revisited in 2009, there was the replica head in a glass case, but it no longer appears to be there.

The 1851 Census of Religious Worship provides an illustration of the convolutions of plurality in the Church of England at this time. The rector of Rendham was the Reverend R Morgan, who had been instituted in 1817. He lived in the parish, but he was, the return explained, incapacitated. Morgan was also rector of Wattisfield way off in north Suffolk, and his income from these two parishes was £520 a year, roughly £100,000 in today's money. He paid just £50 a year (£10,000 in today's money) plus all fees to Charles Douglas to carry out his work for him at Rendham as a curate. Douglas was also curate at nearby Cransford, where he earned £40 a year (£8000 in today's money). Douglas happily filled in the return for Rendham, claiming a healthy attendance of about 200 for the afternoon sermon. There was no morning service here, but there was an even larger attendance at Rendham Independent Meeting House of 245 in the morning and 320 in the afternoon. Given that the population of the parish was only 450, they must have been a godly lot at Rendham. Meanwhile, Morgan's curate at his other parish, Wattisfield, was George Coulcher, and he was having no such truck with the questions asked by the census. Apply to the rector for answer to these inquisitorial questions! he wrote in answer to the query about the church's endowment, and Apply at the Bishop's Registry to the one asking when it had been consecrated. He went further: Not considering above questions as asked, under Census Act, according to opinion of Her Majesty' Law Officers, I decline answering more particularly for satisfaction of one Horace Mann. Mann was the official in charge of administering the census nationally. Of course, the attendance that morning at Wattisfield of just thirty parishioners in a parish of more than six hundred people might have fuelled Coulcher's reticence. One wonders what the incapacitated Morgan made of it all.