This grand late
medieval church sits a good half mile from its village
with just the school and an incongruous 1950s rectory for
company. The wide churchyard is a perfect foil for its
massive bulk. Graves sprawl in all directions, and you
might easily imagine that all mid-Suffolk comes here to
be buried. Above them, St Mary raises its head gloriously
to heaven, a riot of medieval aisles, clerestory and
flushwork. The inscriptions in the flushwork beneath the
battlements are dedicatory inscriptions, asking for
prayers for the souls of Robert Drury and John Tillot.
Also clear is the Marian imagery, her lily and her
monograms. Simon Cotton tells me that it was a big
bequest of 50 marks, and as much more as is possible,
in 1458 from Roger Tyllot of Rougham, that
launched the campaign to build the tower. This guaranteed
Tyllot/Tillot the inscription asking us to pray for his
soul.
The south aisle is castellated with pierced tracery. One
of them has a head in a dish on it, similar to the same
thing on the font at Irstead and the screen at
Trimingham, both in Norfolk, and so it is probably
intended as St John the Baptist. The south aisle predates
the tower, but after the tower, and before the
Reformation of course, came the north aisle. It can be
precisely dated to 1514, because it still bears that
date, reading We pray you to remember us that causyde
ye yle to be made thus.The fortress-like 19th
Century vestry and organ chamber inserted at the east end
of the south aisle seem absurd and intrusive.
The main entrance today is into this north aisle, but the
south porch is worth a look, a fine piece of the early
14th Century, rather mutilated when it was reroofed in
the 17th Century, the inscription 1632 JT giving
the precise date. You step into a large, fine church,
perhaps telling us a bit more than we would like about
the extent of its 19th Century restoration. Above the
nave is a good example of a late medieval hammerbeam
roof, splendidly uncluttered, and in reasonable
condition. The angels on the hammerbeams have lost their
heads and wings, and the figures in the niches of the
wall posts are also damaged. But perhaps that merely
serves to show how little restored this roof is. It was
made safe as part of the mid-19th century restoration. It
is interesting to compare it with the much richer and
glorious roof of the church at nearby Woolpit.
Indeed, Woolpit church is quite a useful comparison with
Rougham. One of Suffolk's most famous churches, and along
with Mildenhall the county's most glorious medieval angel
roof. What else does Woolpit have? It has carved bench
ends in abundance. And here at Rougham is also as fine a
set of medieval benches as you could hope to see - about
half the entire range in this huge church are early 16th
century, arguable the high point of English carpentry,
and contemporary with the roof. But they are entirely
mutilated. Every single bench end figure has been sawn
off at the base. So what happened here? Our knee-jerk
reaction, obviously enough, is that St Mary suffered from
the depredations of the 17th century puritans, and that
awful William Dowsing, who saw off all the medieval art
treasures that the parish had carefully accumulated over
the previous centuries.
Unfortunately for anyone who likes easy answers, this is
nonsense. Dowsing did not come to Rougham. But he did
go to Woolpit, with its amazing angel roof and beautiful
medieval carved bench ends. So before we start blaming
Dowsing, it is as well to look at the evidence.
At Woolpit, William Dowsing recorded that his Deputy
found 80 superstitious pictures. Some he brake
down himself, and the rest he gave orders to
take down; and 3 crosses to be taken down in 20 days.
The superstitious pictures, of course, were in stained
glass, not wall paintings. The three crosses were
outside, on the gables. But Dowsing doesn't mention the
angel roof (a feature that he concerns himself with often
elsewhere) and he doesn't mention the bench ends. Why
not?
Well, the bench ends problem is solved simply enough. The
surviving figures are all animals or mythical beasts. The
same survive at neighbouring Tostock, which Dowsing also
visited. The reason they survived is perhaps simply that
the authorities considered them decorative, and let them
be. Despite the portrait that is often painted of him,
Dowsing was a conservative soul, and theologically very
articulate. He was in the business of rooting out
superstitious imagery - that is to say, objects and
images that might be used in Catholic liturgical
practices. He was also keen to destroy images that he
thought blasphemous, for example symbols of the Trinity,
and especially angels. Dowsing would know very well that
Catholics didn't worship animals.
So why doesn't Dowsing mention Woolpit's angel roof? I
would contend that this is for the very same reason that
Rougham didn't need a visit - it had already been
defaced. The next obvious question is to answer is when
did this destruction occur? There are two possibilities.
One is that it had been done by other puritans during the
furious theological debate over sacramental practice
during the 1630s. Far more likely, and the right answer
in my opinion, is that the destruction at Rougham was
wrought a full hundred years before Dowsing began his
progress through the county.
During the later years of Henry VIII, and the entire
reign of the boy-King Edward VI, roughly 1538 to 1553,
order after order went out from the Protestant reformers
at Whitehall and Lambeth Palace demanding the destruction
of church imagery. Roods came toppling down, and not a
single one survives in all England. Many roodlofts and
roodscreens were put to the hatchet and the bonfire. Any
wall paintings that remained were whitewashed. Fonts were
plastered over, because this was easier than chiselling
off the stone carved imagery, and statues were hauled out
of their niches. Wooden ones were burnt, those made of
stone and alabaster were broken up. Some were sold
abroad, we know. It was a holocaust of church
furnishings. Much evidence of it survives in Suffolk, and
it is almost always blamed on the puritans of a century
later. Unlike Dowsing, who had a precise remit, and
carefully recorded every visit, the 16th century
reformers were not much short of vandals. Of course
Cranmer and his cronies had a theological basis for their
orders, but by the time these orders reached the parishes
they became a licence to destroy.
Eammon Duffy records gangs of drunken youths stumbling
around London, breaking into churches and smashing them
up, and it is not unlikely that the same thing sometimes
happened out in the countryside. In late 1547 in
particular, it is as if the gloves came off, and people
were able to get away with awful acts with impunity.
Duffy records several instances of local landed families
fleecing the church of silverware and vestments, and
selling them for the proceeds. I think that Rougham's
bench ends were sawn off during this holocaust. It would
have been a major job, taking several days. What were
they? Could they have been representations of the
sacraments, virtues and vices, as we find at Tannington,
Wilby and Blythburgh? Were they fabulous animals as at
Woolpit and Stowlangtoft? Were they images of local
people going about their daily business, as at Ixworth
Thorpe? Mortlock thought they might have been angels, and
that the surviving cushions were clouds.
Of course, we will
never know. Two things fascinate me in particular.
Firstly, you can find exactly the same thing across the
A14 at Elmswell, where the medieval bench ends have been
sawn off of cushions in the same way. Secondly, when the
Victorians carried out their major restoration here, the
new benches they installed are exact replicas of the old
ones, even down to the sawn-off scars on the cushions!
And yet, Rougham is not without its medieval survivals.
Tucked away in a rather undignified manner in the north
aisle are fine brasses of Sir Roger Drury and his wife,
which survive from 1405. They are so similar to the pair
to the Burgate family at Burgate in north Suffolk that it
suggests that this was an all-purpose, off-the-peg
design. The 14th Century font at the west end of the nave
has surviving traces of colour, its traceried panels
echoing the great east window at the far end of the
building. The glass on the north side of the chancel
dates from 1904 and is by Burlison & Grylls.
And there is one other survival, intriguing and
delightful. This is the small collection of mostly 15th
Century English glass in the upper lights. Among them is
an exquisite and rare virgo lactans, the Blessed Virgin
offering her breast to feed the infant Christ, intensely
intimate and human. For a moment in time, the centuries
fall away.
