Hopton, Suffolk

All Saints, open, is, apparently, a divisive building - when I admired the red brick clerestory the lady who was cleaning condemned it for being ugly! So if All Saints is a "Marmite" church I have to say I loved it, and not just for its fascinating exterior. Inside is a most extraordinary hammerbeam roof with naïve, or maybe they're rustic, figures [I was told off by the lady when I referred to them as roof angels] which lifts the interior in to the sublime. As a total side note I'm becoming almost as bored of Pevsner's obsession with Kempe as I am with Mee's hagiographical accounts.

ALL SAINTS. S aisle of the late C13, see the W window with plate tracery (two pointed-trefoiled lights and an enriched quatrefoil). Dec E window. Perp widening. The arcade is pre-Perp, with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. Dec W tower with a pretty C18 top. Tall arched bell-openings, and the walls all of flushwork in a chequerboard pattern. The chancel is of c. 1300 or earlier, see the N doorway and the E window (three stepped lancet lights under one arch). Perp N aisle. Late Perp clerestory of brick with two-light windows and a fine roof. Brick shafts help to carry it. Against these small seated figures. The roof is of the hammerbeam type. Against the hammerbeams figures holding a book, a chalice, musical instruments, etc. Carved and coloured wall-plate. - ROOD BEAM. Cut off flush with the walls. - STAINED GLASS. S aisle E window by Kempe, 1905. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup. - (MONUMENT. Thomas Raymond d. 1680. LG)

HOPTON. By a picturesque old bridge we cross the Little Ouse (which is here the boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk) and, passing an old windmill, come to this village of red-roofed houses, near Thetford. The remains of the lost spire, which was blown down, are built into the churchyard wall. The 15th century brick and flint church has a 14th century base to its tower, and the font and chancel are also 600 years old. There is a remnant of a still earlier church in the narrow 13th century tower arch. An extremely high and narrow doorway leading to the tower staircase was probably used as a recess for the processional cross. The ironbound chest is 14th century.

Here, as in so many East Anglian churches, one of the chief glories is the 15th century roof, in brilliant colouring. Its effect is gorgeous. Colossal painted figures, like medieval giant dolls, lie out from the walls looking down on the nave, eight on each side, while eight beams cross the church from head to head. We were told that they were meant for kings and queens; in any case, they are a vivid and delightful group linking up in devoted service the 15th and 19th centuries, for the restoring and repainting of these fine old figures was carried out by the five daughters of a vicar still remembered. Mounted on scaffolding, they accomplished this tremendous labour of love for the church their father served. He himself is remembered by the carved oak pulpit.

A vicar just before him, Henry Dawson, was here for 46 years, and the east window of the Crucifixion and Ascension is to his memory. There is also a charming modern window of the Annunciation. Two worn poppyhead benches in the vestry are old, and the reredos is part of an ancient screen. A marble monument to Thomas Raymond tells us that he was “the first sole keeper of the Papers of State to Charles the Second.”

Flickr.