e-mail simon@suffolkchurches.co.uk

 

St Peter, Thurston

 

I'd come here from Pakenham, barely a mile away. Indeed, houses of the two parishes merge. I was interested to come back to Thurston, because on my previous visit three years ago I hadn't taken any photographs. More than this, I had become fascinated by the activities of Suffolk architect E.C. Hakewill. He worked extensively in the 1860s, and is often good - at Kenton, for instance. But he can also be very undistinguished, as at Rushmere, Brantham and Shottisham. The reason I was intrigued by Thurston is that it was the work of his brother, John Henry Hakewill, and I was intrigued to see what he had got up to.

Hakewill's 1860s Decorated tower behind the imposing 1920s Saxon war memorial. Most often, since the renaissance we've wanted things to look older than they really are - after the brief modernist daylight, we are back to doing it again. Why is this? Why this need to make ourselves look more permanent than we really are?

 

Edward Hakewill's usual approach was to go in, build a north aisle, reduce the internal furnishings to a polite middle-brow sacramentalism, and then leave.

His brother had rather more than that to do here, because of something that happened on the night of Sunday March 18th 1860, which I'll come back to in a moment. Previous to this, and in common with most Suffolk churches, St Peter had been greatly neglected, and its need for a facelift had become obvious.

In fact, as Roy Tricker's splendid church guide records, John Hakewill had already been engaged as the architect for a thorough going-over of the old structure. But shortly before midnight, on the night before work was due to commence, the tower fell.

As I write this, my mind is still full of the horror of the attack on the World Trade Centre, and the collapse of the towers there. This was nothing in comparison, of course but think of the effect on a tiny, remote, rural community of the one permanent thing in its midst disappearing overnight!

The tower collapsed straight down, but falling rubble took out the nave and aisle roofs, as well as destroying piers of both arcades (I am grateful to Roy Tricker's guide for these details).

The parishioners decided to do the obvious, and retreat into the chancel for services. However, just ten days later, the rest of the nave collapsed, bringing down what remained of the arcades and roofs, and destroying all the furnishings, including the pulpit and lectern.

And so, a decision was made to rebuild from scratch, accomodating the new church to the surviving chancel and porch. As Roy Tricker points out, Hakewill was very much of the prevailing opinion of the time that Decorated was the only suitable style for a medieval church (despite the fact that Suffolk's finest moments are mostly Perpendicular), and, as Roy quotes from a Bury Post article of the time, Hakewill was determined that the new church should be entirely in Decorated and correct architecture, replacing the inferior architecture in the old structure.

And so, there it is today. I'm not sure I particularly like it very much, but the exterior is certainly impressive, and the church reopened barely 18 months later, at the cost of about £3,500 (about three quarters of a million in today's money).

I was keen to look for survivals - the font was rescued and repaired, and a considerable amount of medieval glass picked out of the rubble. Much of it is now set in the chancel, apparently.

However, my plan to search for treasures and inspect Hakewill's interior fell foul of circumstance, for as I skidded to a halt in the narrow lane, the wedding party was already making its way up the path. Weddings seem to be the holy of holies these days - I could imagine gatecrashing a Sunday service, or even a funeral, to inspect the architecture, but standing at the back of a wedding would be beyond the pale. So I explored outside instead.

 

The chancel. It wasn't replaced; but as you can see, it was certainly patched up a lot.

This must have been a huge church, even before Hakewill's rebuild - I wondered if it had been a match for Rougham, across the A14. Much of the chancel appears relatively original, despite considerable patching up. The ugly clerestory is, I think we can all agree, a mistake, and shows a tendency of Hakewill to behave like his brother in his attempt to actually darken the upper reaches of the nave. If someone could point out to me a medieval clerestory made up of quatrefoil windows, so I can see what Hakewill was getting at, I'd be very grateful. I've seen it done by John Clemence at Kirkley in the 1870s, where it is equally horrid.

The tower itself is beginning to mellow with age, and is actually rather imposing. My seven year old son looked at the top photo here, and asked if it was from a model village - you can see what he means. It looks exactly as if it was the typical English village church in the display at Legoland. When you consider what Richard Phipson did across the road at Finborough and Woolpit during the same decade, St Peter may have got off lightly.

William Noel Cunliffe, 1878-1933, and Philae his daughter, 1918-1919.

I wandered around the graveyard, and discovered an extraordinary monument against the eastern boundary - I've rarely seen anything so imposing in a Suffolk graveyard. It is to William Noel Cunliffe, and his daughter Philae, a splendid piece of 1930s triumphalism, with flanking dogs. All that is missing is an eternal flame.

From the northern edge of the graveyard, the octagonal turret of St Mary, Pakenham, rises dramatically, like a castle. As for St Peter, I shall have to go back.

St Peter, Thurston, is immediately to the north of the A14, just to the east of Bury. I seem to remember that when I visited three years ago, it was open. But this would be unusual in the Bury area.