Washbrook

St Mary, Washbrook

There is a trick of making a place seem more remote than it actually is. This is almost always intentional these days, and in Suffolk we must be thankful for planning authorities with enlightened attitudes - well, mostly, anyway, and they have not always been so.

An annual spring clean. A silent ship in its secret bowl.

And, my goodness, this place seems remote. You climb away north from the busy little village, along secret doglegging lanes that become narrower and narrower. Hedgerows encroach, the roadway dips and rises dramatically, and it doesn't take much to imagine what it is like here in winter.

Kneelers given an airing; they become a riot of contrast.

Suddenly, you are directed up a muddy track by a little wooden sign, and you reach a green sea of graves, within which St Mary is a ship, floating steadily. The graveyard is like an amphitheatre; only Ringsfield is more dramatic.

The wind ripples the trees, and rooks peel away over the ripening corn. We seem to be a very long way from anywhere at all.

St Mary is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, and this apparent remoteness was one of the contributory causes of redundancy being declared in the 1990s.

Matters had come to a head when the single figure congregation were presented with a six figure restoration bill - this church was declared redundant for the best of all possible reasons, although how one longs for the state funding that parish churches in France have, where, ironically, the Church is already disestablished.

Parishioners here must now travel to Copdock, with which this has been a joint parish since the 1980s - although they have shared a Vicar since the Reformation.

As always, the CCT does a grand job, maintaining this fascinating building, which retains much evidence of an interesting medieval liturgical life, as well as of one of the county's best 19th century restorations.

The restorer here was the great E. B. Lamb, and this is one of his three major works in Suffolk; the others were Leiston and Braiseworth. One of his legacies is the gorgeous red and black banding in the roof tiles.

A Victorian porch on the south side, and what might be taken for a chapel (but isn't) to the north, enfold the 14th century tower. We step through into devotional dimness; the opening door shafts light across the nave into what becomes apparent as a baptistery.

This works rather well; the font was moved into the middle of it, and stained glass all around creates a lovely atmosphere.

It is all thoroughly Victorian; the font is heavily recut, and the glass commemorates the life of Victoria herself, as at Boulge. Her arms hang above the baptistery entrance.

This parish must have been a busy one in Victorian times; one of the buildings you pass on your way through the lanes is the former school. And going back further in time, Washbrook was big enough to maintain two parish churches before the Reformation, the other serving the parish of the hamlet of Velchurch. No trace at all of it survives.

View into Lamb's baptistery.

14th century stalls in the chancel. Note the sedilia beyond the open Priest's door.

Walking eastward through the nave through solid, Victorian furniture, we walk beneath a fine 14th century roof. Nothing fancy, totally practical. The pulpit isn't great; stone ones rarely are. But, in any case, we are already past it, to see something most unusual in this Perpendicular county. For here, we find a superb chancel in the Decorated style. Stalls line the walls, all in niches with charming little heads between them.

Detail of the intersection of the vaulting in the stalls. All the heads are different, and are probably based on life.

They are recoloured as part of Lamb's restoration, but there is no reason to think it wasn't the original design. The 19th century glass beyond lends more drama than it takes away, and there is a simply beautiful Easter sepulchre in the north side of the sanctuary. The whole piece, Decorated and Victorian, is breathtaking.

I loved the stained glass evangelists either side of the altar, and it is easy to imagine the Anglo-catholic tradition making itself at home here a century ago.

A Victorian Matthew and Mark above the Priest's door. A sedilia to the left, stalls to the right.

No longer, of course. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, I thought, and Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. I stepped outside into the gorgeous sunlight. A pair of chaffinches chased each other out of a bush, and I pottered about in the graveyard.

I suggested to you that the remoteness of this church was an illusion, and I am afraid that it is. Climbing up the ridge, the silence and birdsong were effaced by the increasing noise of traffic.

When I reached the top, I looked down; not a quarter of a mile away, the Toys R Us and Tesco superstores shouldered each other at Copdock Mill interchange; an illuminated Pizza Hut hovered like a ufo above PC World, here where the A12 and A14 twist in a knot around each other.

Beyond, the Chantry housing estate loomed, home to 30,000 people, and then the centre of Ipswich beyond, not three miles from where I now stood. Not far short of a quarter of a million people could walk here within an hour, now.

The tide is stemmed - but for how long?

St Mary, Washbrook, is just to the north of the village, which you'll find off of Hadleigh Road, Ipswich; take the road signposted to Sudbury off of London Road behind the Holiday Inn for best results. I've always found it open.

A gorgeous Easter Sepulchre.