e-mail: simon@suffolkchurches.co.uk
All Saints, Wordwell
| There is no village
here, just the name, which seems to have stepped out of
the pages of Finnegans Wake. Decriers of
Victorian restorers should come here, however, because,
as so often in Suffolk, the church was saved from
ruination by a reasonably sensitive and articulate
restoration. The architect here was the great Samuel
Teulon.
Looking very Victorian from the gate. But ancient surprises await. This church, one of three in the joint parish with Culford, had fallen almost into disuse by the early 19th century, but in the 1850s it was time for it to join the great liturgical movement sweeping the Church of England, and Teulon was called in to preserve as much as was possible, while restoring a sense of catholicity. The first part of the restoration was carried out exactly to his plans. The second part, in the late 1860s, wasn't.
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| If this is the case,
than the carving must be pretty much contemporary with
the legend, which was popular in England in the 12th
century. There is another primitve face on one of the legs of the font, but once you are inside the building it is the woodcarving which will most strike you. There is a mixture of benches in here, and some have been heavily restored. But the armrests are super, with their mythological beasts, and you can see the candle holes in some. However, it is the bench backs which you should look at closely, especially that nearest the door. Here, dragons and creatures with human heads chase and roar at each other, as if illustrating some long-forgotten children's tale. My 6 year old had great fun making up a story for it.
A dragon (or perhaps a cockatrice?) harries a man emerging from a snail shell. Meanwhile, an ox looks on. Out of shot behind the ox, a rat with a man's head chases another dragon. This is a lovely church in a beautiful churchyard, despite its proximity to the horrible Bury to Brandon road. And, I am afraid, it is now redundant, although it is inevitable that some of the churches in this area should fall into disuse - in the same parish is the redundant church at Culford Heath. I counted 16 within a 5 mile radius, and here, on the edge of the Elveden forest, one of the most densely populated areas of England in early Saxon times, the population has fallen dramatically in the last 100 years. The Churches Conservation Trust are excellent custodians, though, and thanks to Mr Teulon, there is much worth conserving.
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