| |
|
 |
|
Sudbury is my wife's
hometown, so I visit it often. It is very
noticable how the place has smartened
itself up over the last ten years or so -
in the final decade of the 20th Century
it had become run down. Increasingly, you
see visitors exploring the streets.
Perhaps they are using the town as a base
for trips to Long Melford, Lavenham and
the like, but there is much here of
interest as well, and the town
increasingly courts tourism. There are
excellent surviving buildings from the
medieval period onwards, and Saturday's
market is still one of the busiest in the
county. Towering over it is the town's
most prominent building, St Peter's
church. St Peter is one of
three medieval churches in the town
centre. In fact, it was not built as a
parish church, but as a chapel of ease to
St
Gregory, a few hundred
yards off beside the river. It assumed
parish status after the Reformation, but
the two parishes were later again
combined, and St Peter was declared
redundant in 1972. Outside, there stands
a statue of Sudbury's most famous son,
Thomas Gainsborough, although the
Gainsboroughs themselves worshipped at
Sudbury's third medieval church, All
Saints, where you'll find
their mausoleum.
|
The
outside of St Peter is rather curious, the aisles tapering
towards the east, a reminder that this church was
severely hemmed in by houses and shops until the
20th century. This is one of those churches that
presents us with a complete rebuilding of the
15th Century, as at near neighbours Lavenham and Long
Melford. Although not as grand as either of
those, it is evidence of the wealth of the cloth
industry in this area. St Gregory and All Saints were also
rebuilt, but evidence of earlier churches
survives there. Not so here. The aisles extend
westwards, creating the familiar frontage to the
Market Hill. St Peter is a stately ship of a
building, and I think this is as fine a setting
as that of any urban church in the county. The
Churches Conservation Trust does an excellent job
in maintaining it in all its glory.
There
was an important 19th century restoration here at
the hands of William Butterfield, one of his last
works before the triumph of All Saints Margaret
Street. His is the chancel and with
its splendid reredos, as well
as the interior of the south aisle chapel. The font was moved into the south
aisle to create a grand processional vista from
the west door. This was one of Suffolk's Anglo-catholic shrines,
and the ghosts of Butterfield and his kind are
never far away. The font has a grand cover, with a
lantern top. There is a story that the font was
removed during the Puritan era to be used as a
feeding bowl for pigs.
Butterfield used the surviving
medieval evidence at St Gregory to design an
elaborate canopy of honour, although
perhaps he was overwriting medieval evidence
himself. Along the eastern edge of the modern
ceilure is written Bread of Life, Cup of
Blessing, Precious Blood, poured for man, upon
the Rood, Alleluia Alleluia. Towards the
west end of the nave, fine 18th century portraits
of Moses and Aaron survive, from the former decalogue sequence.
This would have been at the east end before
Butterfield got to work.
Having
congratulated the Churches Conservation
Trust for their oversight of St Peter, I
must also say that this is one of the
hardest CCT churches to visit, which is
pretty scandalous given the prominence of
its location. The church is kept locked,
and there is no longer a keyholder
notice. The building is only accessible
when it is in use for concerts, craft
sales and the like. Butterfield's chancel
and chancel aisle are both now cordoned
off by heavy curtains, the chapel almost
inaccessible because of stacked chairs. I
often say on this site that alternative
uses need to be found for our historic
buildings, so I suppose that I can hardly
complain about the sometimes ignominious
uses to which St Peter is put. But given
Sudbury's increasing emphasis on itself
as a tourist destination, surely more
might be made of St Peter?
The joint parish of
St Gregory and St Peter had a school
about halfway between the two churches,
on North Street. It was demolished in the
early 1990s, and is now a car park. But
the elaborate gateway survives, as well
as the grooves dug with coins into the
bricks by generations of bored
schoolchildren. Ghosts too, of a kind.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
