Hemingstone, Suffolk

St Gregory, open, is a slightly shabby, down at heel building and I had low expectations for its interior but found plenty of interest from monuments to wallpaintings [mostly biblical texts] in a light airy space. It wouldn't make anyone's top twenty Suffolk churches but rewarding nonetheless.

ST GREGORY. At the SW angle of the nave Anglo-Saxon long and short work. Nave and chancel in one. Dec and Perp windows. Unbuttressed W tower. Simple brick N porch. - FONT. Dec, octagonal, with five steep crocketed gables and tracery. - SCREEN. Only half the dado remains. - (DOOR. Iron-bound, C14. In the NW corner of the nave. LG) - PLATE. Set 1759. - MONUMENTS. William Cantrell d. 1585. Tomb-chest with three shields and termini pilasters. Above an inscription framed by short columns. Top with a semicircular shell pattern and two obelisks. Of rustic quality. - Two identical sarcophagi in arched niches to members of the Brand family. By J. Smith of London, 1813, both signed.

HEMINGSTONE. Here, at the corner of its winding lanes, with a cedar and lovely fine sycamores for company, is a church with its roots in Saxon England. It comes into Domesday Book, and though what we see is mostly 14th century, the unmistakable Saxon long-and-short work is still visible at one of the corners of the nave. Two trim gargoyles are looking down from the tower, and there is a canopied niche above the west doorway. The north porch has an old door with a crude lock. A beautiful piece of 14th century work is the font with its carving of tracery and canopies; it has an old wooden cover. The low screen has traceried panels, and is old on the right side and new on the left. A massive embattled rood beam takes the place of a chancel arch, and the cornice of the roof is embattled too. There are some fragments of old glass in green and gold. The south porch, now the vestry, has a curious little story. It is said to have been built by a Roman Catholic, Ralph Cantrell, in the days when his property was liable to confiscation if he did not come to the services in the church. He used to come, we are told, thus far and no farther, entering his own porch but not the actual church. A little peephole in this porch is intriguing, for through it he must often have seen what was going on. There is a curious tomb to another of the Cantrells, William of 1585, decorated with six painted shields. Their family lived at Stone Hall, now a farmhouse with an upper room said to have been a chapel. A bronze tablet shows us the portrait of Sir Richard Edward Rowley Martin, who served in Rhodesia and whose home here was the fine Tudor house with tall chimneys and Flemish gables.

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Claydon, Suffolk

St Peter is one of those, thankfully, rare buildings - a locked CCT church. To be fair there was a number listed but I was on my way home and didn't have time to see if I could gain access, having looked on Flickr I'm not sure I missed much although some of the glass looks good and of course the Henry Moore would have been good to see but it's now in St Mary, Barham so will have to wait for another day.

ST PETER. At the W end Saxon long and short work. Inside the S wall the outline of the former Norman doorway. W tower with flushwork arcading on base and buttresses. On the top of the tower angels and beasts as pinnacles. N porch with stepped gable and rough flint chequering. But what dominates the impression is the transepts (with their high cross roof) and the chancel. They are of 1862, and were built by the then rector and patron of the living, George Drury. Only the Vestry on the N side of the chancel is Perp, see its roof. The work of 1862 was done most lavishly, and Drury did much of it himself. The foliage of the crossing arches is lavish to excess, and the PULPIT with its lacy openwork tracery is very lavish too. - FONT. Octagonal. Panelled stem. Bowl‘with four crowns and four angels with big shields, all under flat arches. - SCULPTURE. Virgin and Child, 1945 and 1949, by Henry Moore. A noble work, a little less hieratic than his other Virgin in a church, that at St Matthew Northampton. It is the sideways movement of the legs that gives this later figure a more informal, more approachable character. The statue is a War Memorial, and it is due to Sir Jasper Ridley (who lies buried in the churchyard) that it was commissioned. - PAINTING. Pentecost, Milanese or Piedmontese, early C16. - STAINED GLASS. Original glass of c.1862 at the E end. - PLATE. Paten of 1676.

CLAYDON. On the road from Ipswich to Norwich, with the River Gipping flowing by, it has three old houses that we see and Saxon masonry that we do not see. One of the houses is a charming white gabled farmstead on the site of a moated castle, part of the moat existing; another is the old hall called Mockbeggars, with two Dutch gables and a Jacobean front, set in pleasant fields. The other house is the old rectory, now rectory no more, though its three fine cedars greet us as we come to the church.

The church as we see it was made new last century, but has an embattled 15th century tower. It is believed that there are Saxon stones in the nave and in the south doorway hidden under the plaster. On the medieval font, with a dome-shaped cover crowned by a golden acorn, are angels under canopies. The pulpit and the transept bench-ends are interesting as being the work of a rector here for half of last century. He did much to beautify the church, carving the stone pulpit with its flowing tracery and the four wooden figures on the benches, two of them men with books, one a man with a bludgeon, and the other a bishop.

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Great Blakenham, Suffolk

St Mary, open, is an obviously much loved church but is internally somewhat dull although the nave and chancel roof is a cracker as is the pulpit and Richard Swift's rather peculiar tomb chest.

ST MARY. Norman probably the unbuttressed W tower in its lower parts and Norman certainly the nave - see the two remaining S windows, the simple S doorway and the simple blocked N doorway. Chancel E. E. with three stepped separated lancet windows at the E end and one small S window. (Late C12 Piscina. LG) C14 the upper parts of the tower. C15 the timber S porch. The single-framed rafter roofs of nave and chancel are assigned by Cautley to the C13. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with panels decorated by various foiled motifs, framing emblems of the Passion. - PULPIT. Jacobean, with tester. - MONUMENT. Richard Swift d. 1645. The rhymed inscription referring to his relations with Russia and Sweden deserves to be read.

GREAT BLAKENHAM. Its church is a veritable treasure house, sheltered by a regiment of beams marshalled in its 13th century roof. The 14th century tower has a huge sundial and two medieval bells. On one of the ancient timbers of the porch is a time-worn carving of the Madonna. There is a 15th century font with emblems of the Passion on shields, altar rails fashioned from the ancient screen with flowers in delicate tracery, and a quaint little roodloft stairway. A 17th century tomb has two cherubs and an ingenious rhyme in which the first letters of each line spell the name of Richard Swift. In the charming Elizabethan pulpit, with a handsome sounding-board, old Thomas Lund preached for 54 years out of the 17th into the 18th century. On the outer wall is a mass dial.

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Ipswich, Suffolk - St Margaret

St Margaret, LNK but with a sign saying it is open on Wednesdays from 9.30-3pm and Sundays 12-3pm during autumn and winter months so who knows what spring and summer may hold? I have to say that I was surprised to find it locked since it is in the heart of the town with constant footfall all around it but then I know nothing about Ipswich other than that it was historically a puritan stronghold so perhaps Ipswichians are all iconoclasts and the church is kept locked for its own protection. Having read Simon Knotts entry and Pevsner a well researched for opening times revisit is on the cards.

ST MARGARET, St Margaret’s Green. Certainly the most spectacular church in Ipswich. It is placed so that it presents itself fully to the approaching traveller, against the background of the old trees of Christchurch Mansion. It has one of the East Anglian clerestories with closely set windows, and it has lavish decoration all over it. The spandrels of the windows, the parapet and the battlements and the pinnacles - all are decorated. The aisle windows are Dec (intersected tracery on the N side), the W tower has two tall two-light bell-openings on each side, flushwork arcading on the top, and pirmacles. On the S side a clock of 1737 in a pedimented aedicule surround. S porch tall with flushwork decoration of the battlements, a flushwork-panelled front, and three niches above the entrance. S transept with flanking polygonal turrets. Dec arcades of five bays. Octagonal piers and double-hollow—chamfered arches. Low chancel allowing for three nave E windows, one of them circular. The chancel arch has crowns, fleurons, and shields on the responds. Splendid double-hammerbeam roof. Figures against the wall-posts. Decorated wall-plate. Baroque painting on the panels between the main timbers. - FONT. Damaged Perp bowl with eight angels. One holds a scroll with the inscription ‘Sal et Saliva’. - PLATE. Two Elizabethan Cups; Paten 1632; Flagon 1719; Salver 1751. - MONUMENTS. Sir William Roskin d. 1512. Arched recess and coarse panelling. Quatrefoil frieze above the canopy. - Edmund Withipoll, the builder of Christchurch Mansion, d. 1574. Slab with fine incised lettering.

Mee is uncommonly brief: The medieval church of St Margaret has a clerestoried nave with a painted roof of double hammerbeams, little figures under canopies bearing them up. There is a 15th century font with angels carved on it, an old coffin lid let into the wall, and a porch with three canopied niches 400 years old.

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Sproughton, Suffolk

All Saints, LNK but with a note helpfully stating that it's open on Wednesdays for private prayer - I don't know if this is due to covid or is normal practice. A quick search on Flickr shows that its locked status is a crying shame if only for the glass.

ALL SAINTS. Very renewed. Unbuttressed W tower. The body of the church essentially of the early C14. Excellent three-bay arcades. The piers deeply moulded with four filleted shafts and four keeled shafts in the diagonals. The hollows between are continuous. Deeply moulded capitals and arches. S doorway with two orders of filleted shafts. Chancel arch of two broad continuous chamfers. Chancel N doorway more nicely designed, with two pretty head-stops. The Double Piscina opposite has bar tracery and a gable. - STAINED GLASS. E chapel s window by Ward & Hughes, 1881 ; bad. - One N aisle window by Whall, 1924. - PLATE. Cup and Cover 1568; Flagon 1757; Paten 1758. - MONUMENTS. Mrs Bull d. 1634. Kneeling figure. Two standing angels pull away a curtain. - Metcalfe Russell of The Chantry d. 1785. Good. No effigies. Urn against a black relief obelisk. l. and r. of the inscription excessively elongated poplar trees.

SPROUGHTON. A big village on the River Gipping, it has much to remind us of days long gone. There are many old -cottages, several old houses, and a water-mill still working; and opposite the church is a pink-washed Elizabethan rectory. On a hill some way off stands Chantry House of the 18th century, with many windows overlooking magnificent grounds, now a public park. It was once the home of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, last Lord Chief Baron.

Charmingly situated among the trees, the church has a fine embattled tower of the 14th century and a clerestory of the 15th, the rest of the building being from the same two centuries. Outside two of the windows we noticed fragments of sculpture, heads of a gibbon and a bearded man; and in the south porch are old seats and a finely moulded doorway with slender shafts. The nave has arches on clustered columns, and is crowned by a hammerbeam roof with some splendid wooden angels, one of them praying, another with a book, and others with a shield, a mace, a cross, and a crozier. The vestry has a peephole, the chancel has seven old bench-ends with poppyheads, and the north aisle a lovely Whall window showing St Christopher in dark purple. There is a double canopied piscina 600 years old. There are many memorials from the last three centuries. Angels in red and white are holding back blue curtains for us to see an old lady of 76 who died in 1634. She is Elizabeth Bull, carved as a kneeling figure on a red cushion, her black dress and hat relieved by a white ruff. A quaint tablet has a winged hourglass resting on a skull, and another tells of a distinguished 18th century naturalist, Michael Collinson. Most tragic is a record of the deaths of- three brothers, one from a wound at the storming of an Indian fort in 1840, another of yellow fever the same year, and the third in China two years later.

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Burstall, Suffolk

St Mary, open, is mostly notable for its hammerbeam angel roof, C14th north aisle parclose screen and the north arcade [Mee's claim that it was inspired by Milan Cathedral seems a tad unlikely to me]; to be honest I didn't find it a particularly interesting interior.

ST MARY. Essentially of the early C14 with a most uncommon N arcade of four bays. Very finely moulded piers, their front mouldings running continuously into the arches, their mouldings towards the arch openings interrupted by capital bands with fleurons. Steep arches. N windows with finely moulded rere-arches . Finely moulded S doorway (continuous mouldings). Early C14 also the lower chancel and the W tower. The bell-openings are cusped lancets, and below them are quatrefoil windows in circles. Perp S porch of timber with cusped side openings and decorated bargeboards. Perp hammerbeam roof in the nave. The chancel roof is single-framed and may be of the same date as the chancel. - SCREENS. Of the Perp rood screen only the dado survives. More interesting is the N parclose screen. This belongs to the C14. It has shafts instead of mullions and several simple patterns of flowing tracery.

BURSTALL. It has a brook running into the Orwell and a church 600 years old, rich with gifts from the centuries, guarded by a tower with walls pierced by quatrefoils. The doorway arch is made of upturned limbs of trees, with the familiar East Anglian carving.

The interior was the work of men who must have greatly loved their task, and found in Italy their inspiration in fashioning the clustered columns of the arcade. Copied from those in Milan Cathedral, their dainty capitals are delightful, some with mouldings, others with tiny faces and rosettes. Four little octagonal pillars cluster round the pedestal of the font. A fine 15th century hammer-beam roof spans the nave, supported by modern winged angels; a splendid 14th century screen separates the chancel from the aisle: and the chancel screen has still in it the base of the medieval roodscreen. There are several old benches.

The gifts of our own time to the church include a charming east window of Gabriel bringing the good news to the Madonna, and of  St John tenderly leading her, bowed and weeping, from the foot of the Cross. The peace memorial window has two Old Testament subjects. One is of Joshua, with helmet, red cloak, and spear, and with him the Captain of the Host in golden armour, his sword resting on his shoulder; the other is the scene in the tent of Saul, who, with his spear dug into the ground, sleeps with his armour by him, while David restrains an attendant from killing him.

We noticed that George Naylor was vicar of Burstall for the remarkable period of 59 years from 1795.

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Hintlesham, Suffolk

Yesterday I went on my first proper church crawl since the first lockdown [March 2020] but inadvertently started off with two churches I had previously visited in February 2020, Copdock and Belstead [both LNK], and so abandoned my list and followed my nose which led me to St Nicholas [open].

An attractive building with some good glass, two great corbels, a monument for Thomas, d.1593, and Nicholas Tymperley and an outstanding, what I took to be, brass to, their respectively grandson and son, John Timperley d. 1629. All in all a good restart to the trip.

ST NICHOLAS. E. E. arcades of four bays. The piers are circular-octagonal-circular on the S side, octagonal-circular-octagonal on the N. Double-chamfered arches. Dec S aisle and chancel, Perp W tower and clerestory. Perp timber S porch. The N side is much simpler than the S side. - COMMUNION RAIL. With twisted balusters. - PANELLING. Against the E wall. Perp and crested, which made Cautley suppose that it was originally the rood-loft parapet. - PAINTING. Fragment of a St Christopher in the nave opposite the S entrance. - MONUMENTS. Thomas Tympley d. I593 and his wife and his son’s family. The son’s date of death is not entered. Two groups of small kneeling figures in the usual arrangement across prayer-desks. - Capt. John Timperley d. 1629. A fine, elegant, upright figure, engraved on a large slate plate. The figure has an engraved architectural frame with tympanum and trophies l. and r.

HINTLESHAM. A charming village it is, with many trees and attractive cottages, and the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil; we could hear it as we sat in church. An avenue of limes leads to the Elizabethan great house, the home of the Timperleys, whose monument is one of the delights of Hintlesham.

The church, with a lovely exterior, has a fine flint embattled tower with two grotesque gargoyles, and is mostly 600 years old; but the nave arcades, several windows, a doorway, and a piscina are all 13th century. The clerestory windows are 15th. It is a spacious and aged-looking place with plain walls and a chancel as wide as the nave. Across the chancel is a beam resting on corbels of men with their tongues out, and on the north wall of the nave are traces of painting. There is an old oak door leading to the vestry, and two windows of the north aisle have fragments of 15th century glass. An unusual feature here is the very high and winding rood-stairway with 18 steps.

There are memorials of the Timperleys from 1558 till our own time. One of them was rector in the dark reign of Mary Tudor, and here by the altar rails is a family group of them from the same century, kneeling figures carved in alabaster. Thomas Timperley of 1593 is facing his wife at a desk, with a son and eight daughters behind them; and Nicholas is kneeling with his wife Anna, with their six sons and eight daughters squeezed behind them. Across the chancel is a big marble tablet engraved with a 17th century portrait of John Timperley in armour.

A familiar figure of Hintlesham was the striking personality of Mr Havelock Ellis, the famous psychologist and essayist, who died herein 1939. A sea captain’s son, he went out to Australia in his father’s ship in the seventies of last century, and came home after a few years intent on devoting himself to literature and the psychology of sex. He fought battle after battle on matters which stirred a sensitive public opinion, but persisted in pursuing his ideals and produced a great number of books on all phases of sex. He was a poet, too, and a beautiful writer; and a good friend when his shyness and the “awe-inspiring nobility of his head and face” were overcome. He said of himself that he desired no finer epitaph than that he had added a little to the sweetness of the world and a little to its light.

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