Westhorpe, Suffolk

St Margaret, open, was the proper beginning of this visit - I think the most successful ever, with 10 out of 11 being accessible - and is a delight. From its location to its contents there's something for everyone here - I particularly liked the traceried south door and the parclose screen. The somewhat absurd Barrow monument is, however, the crowning feature, so much so that in my haste to examine it I missed a couple of monuments to Nathaniel and Jane Fox in the chancel - what a shame I'll have to go back! There's also a good monument to William Barrow in the chance. A great start to the official tour.

ST MARGARET. Dec W tower with Perp W window. Dec N aisle with Perp N windows. Dec chancel with renewed E window and ogee-arched PISCINA. Dec W window in the S aisle, but Perp S windows and S porch. Perp clerestory. Attached to the N side the Barrow Chapel, of brick, with a Jacobean ceiling with pendant but C18 window surrounds. Dec arcades of four bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. Dec tomb recess in the S aisle. Perp roof of simple hammerbeams alternating with tie-beams on big arched braces. - PARCLOSE SCREE. Dec, and quite an important piece, with shafts instead of mullions and three circles with two mouchettes each as tracery. Much original colour preserved. - PULPIT. Simple, Perp. - BENCHES. Just a few. - SOUTH DOOR. With tracery.- PA1NTING. In the Barrow Chapel black floor slab painted with flower arrangements. - PLATE. Cup 1631. - MONUMENT. Maurice Barrow d, 1666. Semi-reclining white marble figure, hand on heart. Two flying putti hold curtains back from a circular inscription plate with a wreath border. Top entablature with segmentally raised centre.

WESTHORPE. Here lived and died a Queen of France, Henry the Eighth’s sister Mary, who was married to Louis the Twelfth of France in 1514. It is a pathetic story, for she was married as a beautiful girl of 18 to a man of 52, a few months after he had lost his wife. She was married in October and was crowned in November, and on New Year’s Day her lord was in his grave. She came back to England after three months of romance and tragedy and married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and they lived at Westhorpe Hall, where she died, being buried in the old Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and lying now by the altar of St Mary’s in that town. Their hall has gone, but their royal pew, with its cockscomb hinges on the door, is still in the 14th century church, old glass in one of the windows has the Suffolk coat-of-arms, and there is a memorial tablet. The branches of a grand old yew sweep the churchyard, from which one of the characteristic East Anglian porches leads into the church. There is old ironwork on the belfry door. A charming medieval piscina has a wreath of acanthus leaves above its pillared arch. The embattled screen is a delightful patchwork of old and new with some of the original painted panels remaining and there is old linenfold on a bench near the reading desk.

A nameless tomb under an arch in one of the aisles, 600 years old, is believed to belong to Henry de Elmham. A quaint wall-monument of painted alabaster in the chancel is to the memory of William Barrow who died in the same year as Shakespeare; his two wives are kneeling side by side on a crimson cushion before a prayer desk, wearing ruff's and a sort of mortar-board headdress. A daughter and a son kneel behind them and two tiny babies lie at the foot of the desk. The painted heraldry on the tomb is still bright. In the year of the Great Fire of London Maurice Barrow left £500 to be spent on “an elaborate white marble tomb” in this church, and his figure is still on it, half reclining. His face and hands are finely carved. Two plump cherubs with gilded trumpets are unveiling a long inscription, and two more hold up his shield and coat-of-arms. The monument was begun by an artist who was “suddenly snatched out of this world,” and was finished by his brother.

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