| |
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.
|
|
