Hartest, Suffolk

Hartest as a village is simply stunning but I'm in two minds about All Saints. On the one hand I like its simplicity and the lady chapel where the door has been replaced with glass to create  a wonderfully light space but on the other it has been savagely restored and feels soulless. I think I'll plump for I quite like it for the details rather than the whole.

ALL SAINTS. Nicely placed in a dip. All Perp, unless the arcades with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches are earlier. They are certainly earlier than the arches into the chapels. W tower much repaired with brick. N porch of knapped squared flint, over-restored. Three niches over the entrance, and shields with initials l. and r. - PULPIT. Jacobean, good, with two tiers of the usual short blank arches. -PLATE. Cup perhaps Elizabethan; Paten 1710. - MONUMENT. Lt. Harrington, R.N., d. 1812. By Henry Westmacott. An anchor and, hanging from its top, a ship’s sail. Large Green by the church, with a number of nice houses, especially the CROWN INN.

HARTEST. It lies snugly in a valley with pretty cottages gathered about its green and a church hiding in a corner. Most of the church is 15th century, but the base of the tower and the arches of the nave are 14th. The aisles have splendid roofs with embattled cornices, the handsome pulpit is Jacobean, and in the old north porch still hangs a venerable door with iron studs.

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