Badwell Ash, Suffolk

St Mary, open, is a delight - a proper Hobbiton building - and inside it gets better with a hammerbeam roof complete with angels, a fine font and good glass. All in all a building to relish.

ST MARY. The PISCINA in the S aisle is of c. 1300, i.e. has no ogee forms yet. The arcade between nave and aisles with tallish octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. The chancel is Dec too. The tracery in the two-light windows has the motif of the four-petalled flower. The N nave windows are Perp, tall, of two lights. On the S side at that time the clerestory was built or rebuilt with seven windows as against the four bays below. Roof with alternating hammerbeams and tie-beams on short arched braces. Both rest on wall-posts with small  figures. Against the hammerbeams bigger figures. The W tower is Perp too. Flushwork emblems on the base, flushwork panelling on the battlements, and an inscription asking for prayers for John Fincham and his wife. Perp finally the S porch. This has a facade with flushwork panelling all over. In the spandrels of the entrance arch St George and the Dragon. Flushwork emblems on the buttresses; for instance a plough and the blacksmith’s tools. One niche above the entrance. - FONT. Octagonal, Dec. Shields on the stem. On the bowl ogee arches carried by heads. Embattled top. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup and Paten.

BADWELL ASH. As we come along the village street toward the neat little 13th century church we see against the sky, round the top of the fine flint panelled tower, an unusual frieze of lettering of which we can make out only an occasional word or character, so whimsical is the ancient spelling and so curious their order, sometimes even upside down. The vicar kindly supplied a translation from the parish records, and then, piecing out word by word the pious exhortation of the 14th century benefactors, we send a friendly thought back through the centuries as we read:

Pray for the good estate of John Fincham and Marget hys wyf.

Eight lifesize angels hold up the high-pitched roof of oak, and on the corbels below them are 16 figures of saints. Trefoiled windows add to the beauty of the clerestory. The rood stairway remains in many churches of the neighbourhood, but not often do we see, as here, a small carved door opening to the foot of the stair; it is only 16 inches wide. A little saint’s head in old yellowish glass is left of the early painted windows; and most effective are the figures of Christ, the Madonna, and St Peter on the clear glass background of the modern east window. St George and St Michael look down from a window to the Fallen.

The picturesque moat at Badwell Green is still filled with water.

Flickr.