e-mail: simon@suffolkchurches.co.uk
St Petronilla, Whepstead
| This is a sweet little
church with a unique dedication - it is the only St
Petronilla in England, but we'll come back to that in a
moment. It sits in a tree-shaded churchyard on a hill,
not far from the Bury to Glemsford road, where you'll find the
keyholder. You'll also find Suffolk's only village
post-office that doubles as a second-hand bookshop.
A buttressed stumpy tower. The spire fell when Cromwell died - as usual in Suffolk, blame the Puritans again. The south porch is on the sheltered side of the building, and as you walk around the tower you may feel that it is all a bit Victorian. The tower itself is a curious, stumpy shape, testimony to the loss of its spire in the 17th century. It fell in the same night as the one at nearby Dalham, supposedly on the night that Oliver Cromwell died. |
An altar stood here once. Articulate conjunction of spaces at Whepstead. |
The inside of the
church is bright and clean, and only recently renovated.
The most unusual thing here, apart from the name, is the rood-loft stairway in the south wall. Not only is it cut
into a window bay, as at Barningham, but on one of the steps there
is a piscina drain, presumably to serve an altar
set against the wall here. I have seen them in window
sills elsewhere, and there is one high on a column at Bures, but this is the only one I
know in a rood-loft stair. The great Norman chancel arch here, alas, is not Norman at all. It was built by the Victorians, but, in its defence, it does look rather fitting. You can still see clearly where the rood-loft once went. There is a lovely postcard for sale here, a print of Oliver Thomas's painting of the church. The artist not only gave his original work free, but paid for the postcards to be printed out of his own pocket, as a fund-raising gift towards the continuing work on this very pleasant building. Alas, also, the
dedication is a Victorian invention. Much more
interestingly, the original dedication was to St Thomas
of Canterbury, whose cult was viciously excised by the
Anglican reformers of the 1530s and 1540s. St Petronilla, Whepstead, is just off the B1066 Bury to Glemsford road. The keyholder lives nearby. See MAP |
The supporting structure is Norman, but the arch ain't, I'm afraid. Victorian fancy in a mid-Suffolk setting. |
