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One of the things which
makes Suffolk special is that there is no
coast road. Because of this, there is no
ribbon of development, and settlements
near to the sea feel remote from each
other. Indeed, is is often quicker to
travel by boat between some of them than
to attempt to reach one from another by
road. Further inland, there is another
veil of protection, for here is the
heathland, and the forests with their
millions of trees. Among them are the
abandoned American airbases of Woodbridge
and Bentwaters, and villages that hide
and huddle, sometimes surprisingly large
places. Tunstall is one of them. The
church sits on the back road towards
Orford. It has a
grand tower, but it was struck by
lightning in the 18th century. The most
recent rebuilding of the top was in the
1970s, presumably replacing the former
job, which Cautley thoroughly disparaged.
There's a lovely priests door in the
south wall of the chancel; I have a vivid
memory of passing this way in the late
1990s and finding it completely and
delightfully overgrown with comfrey. To
the south of the chancel is a gravestone
which supposedly commemorates two
smugglers overcome by the fumes of their
wares.
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The church is long and
narrow, but the clear windows, white walls and
charming brick floors mean that it is full of
light, and are a perfect setting for the creamy
woodwork of a superb set of box pews. The west
end of the nave is open, creating a sense of
space around a prettily set Purbeck Marble font.
On the side of the tower arch, the graffiti
includes several boats as they might have been
seen on the 17th Century River Deben. The one
jarring note in all this is the wedding cake of a
pulpit, and yet in a funny way it is not out of
place in all this light and space.
The
restraint of the nave offsets the beautiful
simplicity of the chancel, where the clean,
modern sanctuary is backed by an excellent window
of the 1950s Depicting three Archangels, St
Michael in the centre flanked by St Gabriel and
St Raphael. A curiously functional maker's mark
reveals that it was Designed by E Dilworth,
Glazier J Andrews, Painter N Attwood - I'm
not aware of coming across their work anywhere
else in Suffolk, but the window suits this church
perfectly, being simple and beautiful.
| The war memorial
is one of several in east Suffolk which
records how many people lived in the
parish at the start of the war, how many
men went off to fight, and how many died.
Most church war memorials should be taken
with a pinch of salt, as they often
recorded only Anglicans, and then only
those of whom there was a record, or who
still had family in the parish once the
turmoil of war had ended. But these
statistics have a pleasing
verisimilitude, and it is sobering to
reflect that, of the 625 residents of
Tunstall in 1914, no fewer than 131 of
them went off to fight - that's about
half of all the men in the parish.
Eighteen of them never came back. East
of Tunstall, the countryside gets wilder,
and off in the direction of lonely
Wantisden there is a little hamlet, where
you'll find the Tunstall Baptist Church
surrounded by a huddle of cottages, as if
the early 19th century non-conformists of
this parish had set themselves adrift in
a lifeboat. To the north, on the bank of
the river Alde, the parish contains one
of Suffolk's most famous buildings, Snape
Maltings.
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Simon Knott, September 2008
    
   
    
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