Tuesday 26 October 2010

Little Wratting, Suffolk

St Mary is beautiful but locked with no keyholder listed but probably justified as it is very isolated. However I'm not sure I missed much.

HOLY TRINITY. Septaria and flint. Nave and chancel and Victorian bell-turret with short shingled spire . The nave is probably late Anglo-Saxon, see the masonry and the shapes of the S and N doorways. The S doorway has a lintel with a dedication inscription in large letters. It is, unfortunately, incomplete. The E half of the chancel is Dec, the Norman chancel arch is a Victorian introduction. Chancel E window with minor (rather standardized) flowing tracery. Dec also the Piscina. Perp timber-work at the W end of the nave to support the bell-turret. - BENCHES. Simple, straight-headed, with a little tracery. - One BOX PEW. - SOUTH DOOR. With some Norman ironwork. - PLATE. Cup 1684; Paten 1711. - MONUMENT. One kneeling figure from a Jacobean monument, in a bad state of preservation. The monument stood in a former N chapel (Turnour Chapel) which was pulled down in 1710, but of which the Perp W respond survives.


LITTLE WRATTING. Firs and chestnut trees and a tiny medieval church share the glorious vistas of a lonely hilltop. In the 15th century windows of the nave are a few fragments of ancient glass with faded yellow flowers. There is a plain old font, some rough benches 500 years old, and on a windowsill is part of an old monument, a small stone lady kneeling on a cushion. But the rarest treasure here is the door into the nave; it was made 800 years ago by a Norman carpenter and is adorned with a Norman ironworker's scrolls and zigzag lines, one of the oldest doors in all the land. It must have opened and closed for 25 generations of Little Wratting folk.

Flickr.

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