It won't go down very well if I start by saying that this village is a suburb of Glemsford. To be honest, that is the way it looks on the map, but on visiting it I decided that it seemed to have a considerable life of its own. It is full of proper houses, the homes of ordinary people. I doubt that there are too many commuters or holiday homes in Stanstead.

Famously, this church was threatened with closure a couple of years ago; not by the forces of darkness or the property developers at Diocesan House (is there a difference?) but by the rather eccentric Rector whose benefice covers this parish. He felt that not enough people were coming to hear him preach. I was therefore pleased to find it open; especially since his main church, which shall remain nameless, but it is in a parish of which this appears to be a suburb, is kept locked.

Cautley also treated Stanstead with considerable disdain during his great survey of the 1930s; but the Victorian character that he so abhored has matured, and here at St James is to be found in full flower. Even before you go in, note the Tudor-style vestry chimney on the north side; there is one of those splendid H-chimneys on the south, which everyone else seems in such a hurry to take down.

The parish keep the priest's door open, so it is directly into the chancel that you step; but first, make sure you notice the original 14th century south door, with all its fittings. The chancel is of the finest rural quality, from the sequence of tiles in the sanctuary (I detect the hand of diocesan architect Richard Phipson) to the memorials to Rectors Samuel Sheen pere et fils - this is grand Victorian Gothic writ homely.

The tower makes the church appear larger than it is; inside, it is tiny. At the east end is a 16th century bell by the Stephen Tonni workshop of Bury. The bell-frame was found to be crumbling in the 1970s, and all the bells except this one were dispersed. On the north wall is a good set of Queen Anne arms; either side are two windows, one with some surviving medieval glass in the tracery, the other with excellent 19th century glass, thoroughly in the spirit of its medieval predecessors. It even recreates the familiar sense of an amalgamation of medieval glass collected from elsewhere - but it isn't. I wonder who it was by.

Finally, the glass in the east window. As far as I'm aware, this artist also has not been identified, but it clearly matches the tilework of the sanctuary; a serious calvary of the 1870s, perhaps, and one of the best.

St James, Stanstead, is located just to the north of Glemsford, signposted from the main road between Long Melford and Clare. I found it open.

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