Ixworth Thorpe, Suffolk

I drove past All Saints, locked, no keyholder listed, twice before I finally spotted it, so why it's LNK eludes me. This is more annoying than usual for, having peeked through the windows, it contains some very fine bench ends. To rub salt in to the wound I had a look at Simon Knott's Flickr entry.

ALL SAINTS. Outside the village; small and thatched. Weather-boarded bell-turret, nave and chancel. Norman S doorway, very plain. Good brick S porch with stepped gable, and battlements decorated with motifs in flint and brick. Chancel with lancets. In the nave some Dec windows. (The E window has wooden tracery. LG) - PULPIT. Jacobean. - BENCHES. The ends with poppy-heads, the arms with animals and figures, including a mermaid. - COMMUNION RAIL. Three-sided, with late C17 turned balusters. - PLATE. Cup 1676; Paten and Flagon 1678. - MONUMENT. Tablet to John Croft d. 1644. The tablet is called in the inscription ‘Marmoriolum hoc’.

IXWORTH THORPE. A tiny place in Robert Bloomfield's country, its lonely church has been here 700 years and has windows from all the great building centuries. Its roof is thatched, and its little tower, beginning in stones and flints, has patches of brick, and ends with a wooden belfry. The doorway for the priest was in use soon after Magna Carta; and just as old is the step of the porch, for it is a coffin lid of those days. The porch has flint ornament on its battlements, old beams, and wooden seats; but the oldest thing on this hilltop is the doorway itself, very small and low and in the simple Norman style. A piscina is nearly as old, and the pulpit and the font cover are Jacobean; but the surprise of the village is its fine little collection of bench-ends carved by a craftsman of 500 years ago to make a wooden zoo. There are 28 of them, dogs and birds, a monkey, a unicorn, a lion, a griffin, and a cat. Some are human, and here we see a mermaid looking into her glass, a jolly little man with a flat cap, and a lady taking her lap-dog for a walk.

Flickr.