West Stow

St Mary, West Stow

Woodland on the edge of heathland; now the quietest part of Suffolk, this was once the most populous area in England. Here came the Angles and the Frisians, the Saxons and the Jutes, quietly and industriously up the estuaries and river valleys, reclaiming the land the Romans had abandoned, clearing acres of forest and bringing them under cultivation, settling down. They're still here, of course. But this part of Suffolk now is one of tiny villages, and many redundant churches. St Mary is not redundant, but I didn't see a single soul on my journey across its parish.

St Mary - silent as its graves.

I was cycling from Icklingham on a day of high summer: Ipswich was miles, and promises, away. But already, the high clouds were beginning to condense into mackerel waves, and there would be thunder before nightfall.

That was ahead of me. Here, I skidded to a halt in as wide a graveyard as I've seen, the central area bowling green-trim, the outer edges wild, and merging into the forest.

Largely 14th century tower. But if you want to see the best of the interior, you'll need to go to London.

It was as if this was a clearing that some 7th century Angle had hacked out and made safe for theocracy - and perhaps it is.

St Mary itself is nothing if not Victorianised. This largely 14th and 15th century church was mostly derelict by the early 19th century, as so many were around here. The Victorians stepped in and saved it.

What is like inside? God knows. I found a locked door, and no sign of a keyholder.

There's a Norman doorway, I know; but given the possibility that you might get inside, you still won't see it, because it is locked away in the vestry. Even Mortlock had to look through the window.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since the area north of Bury St Edmunds has East Anglia's largest concentration of locked medieval churches. I suppose they know what they are doing. Or think they do.

I thought parish churches were meant to be an act of witness, and the Church of England the Body of Christ on Earth today. But obviously, I'm wrong.

In the 1930s, Cautley traced St Mary's rood screen dado to the reserve collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was donated, presumably after the 19th century restoration, as an exemplar of East Anglian rood screen woodwork.

Unusually for Cautley, he didn't march in with guns blazing, retrieve it, and force the churchwardens to reinstall it (or perhaps he did, and the museum wouldn't let him have it). Whatever, little survives of the building's medieval liturgical past, as far as I know.

And what of the present, and of the future? Well, this inviolate shell gives the impression of being but a relic of the past; a more recent relic, to be sure, than the excavated and reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village a mile or so away. But something no longer intended for you and me, just the same.

St Mary, West Stow, is just to the north of Flempton on the A1101 Bury to Mildenhall road. I found it locked without a keyholder.