Tuesday 25 October 2011

Poslingford, Suffolk

My run of good luck had to end and so it proved with St Mary the Virgin - locked with no sign of a keyholder. I took the exteriors and headed off for Clare.

ST MARY. Very restored. Norman nave with one N window, a fragment of the N doorway, and a good s doorway with one S order of shafts with finely decorated scalloped capitals and some geometrical decoration on the abaci. Tympanum with stars, rosettes, and interlace. W tower of the late C13 with triple-chamfered arch towards the nave. Chancel with late C13 windows. Nave with one Dec window with reticulated tracery. Nice Perp S porch of brick with three brick niches above the entrance and brick windows. Nice niche inside a Perp nave window. - SCREEN. Tall, with two-light divisions, segmental arches and tracery over. - PAINTING. C13 scrolls in a chancel window.

St Mary the Virgin (3)

POSLINGFORD. It has some delightful thatched cottages with a myriad colours in their gardens, and a medieval church. Most of the church is 15th century, but its ancient brick porch, with niches under its crow-stepped gable, shelters a Norman doorway adorned with exquisite flowers. In the embattled tower is an old chest and a bell brought from the ruined Chipley Abbey a mile away. The chancel has traces of red wall-paintings, including a figure with a gabled building in his hand, probably representing the founder of the church; in the vestry is a copy of a Doom painting revealed last century and unhappily destroyed. The best possession of the church is the 15th century screen with grand tracery and arches, and little flowers hanging from it.

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