Somerton, Suffolk

St Margaret is another church that left me with mixed feelings - is it being gently neglected or is it a wild life reserve? Either way it's plainly largely unused and seems to be rather unloved. Having said that, however, a keyholder is listed and although not terribly interesting inside there is an a squint between the Lady chapel and the chancel and good gargoyles and grotesques on the tower.

ALL SAINTS. Norman nave. Small N doorway with one order of shafts carrying scalloped capitals and an undecorated arch. Early C14 chancel and chancel chapel, surprisingly spacious. The chancel has one cusped lancet W of the chapel. The arcade pier has big filleted shafts and spurs in the diagonals. In the chapel also one cusped lancet. The neighbouring window is segment-headed. The E window is a Perp insertion, but has the early C14 shafting preserved inside. A curious device is the shafted squint which leads into the chancel Piscina. - FONT. Perp, octagonal, simple. - PULPIT. Jacobean. - COMMUNION RAIL, now in the place of the rood screen. Jacobean or Early Stuart. - PLATE. Cup, Paten, and Almsdish 1761.

SOMERTON. It has spacious views and a little 13th century church with a Norman doorway no more used. In the 15th century tower are three bells which first rang out in Elizabeth’s day, and in the porch is still the medieval door with its original ironwork. There is a traceried 15th century font with carvings of a chalice and a rose, a Jacobean pulpit, and a chancel screen fashioned from old altar rails. Among fragments of ancient glass we noticed an ugly face and a lovely rose. In the sanctuary is a stone in memory of John Maddy, who became rector here at the end of the 18th century and stayed for half of the 19th.

Flickr.