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Whatfield is a village I
often cycle through on my way to or from
Ipswich. The original entry for St
Margaret on this site wasn't terribly
exciting, as I had not seen inside it. I
kept meaning to revisit, but most
unusually for this part of Suffolk the
church is kept locked. There is a
keyholder notice, but on the couple of
occasions that I'd tried for the key over
the last few years I had found nobody in.
It wasn't until I came this way with John
Vigar in the summer of 2009 that the door
was answered by the keyholder's daughter,
barefoot and somewhat preoccupied, for
she had just stood on a wasp. I took the
key gratefully and sympathetically, and
headed back down the High Street to the
church. Whatfield is comfy
sort of village in the hills above Hadleigh.
It is not unattractive, and it is big
enough to have a life of its own, which
out here means a pub and a school. There
is a good mixture of local farmworkers
and Ipswich commuters, giving the place a
bit of vibrancy. The
payoff for this is usually a large amount
of undistinguished development, and there
is certainly some of this. But St
Margaret is in a delightful spot, just
off the village high street in a cluster
of old cottages, although the new tarmac
path rather spoils the elegance and
rusticity of the secretive graveyard.
This church is well protected by the
proximity of its neighbours from any
incursions, and really there is no reason
why it should not be open every day.
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The
little Church sprawls somewhat among the trees, a
kink in the roofline giving it a slightly
hump-backed look. The truncated tower is rather
primitive; but it is not as old as it looks,
being a 15th century perpendicular affair cut
down to size and rendered in cement, probably by
the early Victorians. An action like this is
usually a sign that a place fell on hard times
after medieval prosperity, and there was not
enough money around during the 19th Century
Anglican revival to rebuild it properly. The body
of the church is slightly older than the tower;
and, although the Victorians were busy here, Mortlock thought
the 19th century windows were probably fairly
accurate reproductions of what had been here
before. The building is pleasingly irregular, and
seems to slope up towards the east.
| The red brick porch is early
16th century, and has the curiosity of
two flanking niches at ground level. The
upper part seems to be largely restored,
but it would be interesting to know if
there were once niches there as well. The
modern copper sundial had weathered
considerably since my first visit in the
1990s. It replaced a wooden 19th century
one which is now inside the porch, above
the south doorway. We unlocked the door
and stepped inside. I must say that I
found the interior rather gloomy, having
come here from light-filled Elmsett. The
west end of the nave feels rather
crowded, thanks to a fine 18th century
west gallery. The view to the east is
slightly curious: there is no chancel
arch, but the space is filled in above a
roof beam to create a tympanum. Beyond,
the chancel is filled with coloured light
from the attractive east window with
glass as jaunty as that in an ice cream
parlour. The roof is
entirely rustic, the uneven ceiling
rising above the roughly-hewn tie-beams.
Perhaps the greatest treasure of the
building is the elegant 13th Century holy
water stoup by the south doorway. Did it
come from here originally, I wonder? By
contrast, the font of a century later is
a plain, blockish thing. The benches are
mostly Victorian, but one at least dates
from 1589, when John Wilson, presumably
the churchwarden, saw fit to have his
name engraved upon it. Overall,
the sense is of being in a plain and
simple rustic building which speaks
mostly of its post-Reformation history.
William Vesey's memorial from the end of
the 17th century appears rather grander
than it would in a rather less humble
setting, and I like St Margaret all the
more for that.
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Simon Knott, October 2009
  
  
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