Sunday 7 July 2019

Onehouse, Suffolk

St John the Baptist, open, was a bugger to find - top tip, if you're relying on SatNav ignore the postcode and use "Forest Road" instead then follow a couple of road signs until intuition kicks in - and when I did eventually find it, I'm afraid to say I found it profoundly dull. Now this is odd since it's a round tower church and that alone should be enough to excite but the tower is oddly short [it was deemed unsafe in the 90s and rebuilt in its current unsatisfactory form] and the interior is overly restored.

Having said that I have to give it kudos for being open and the font is interesting.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. Norman round tower. Nave and chancel, the chancel Victorian. - FONT. Norman, of cauldron shape, with sharp angles and some decayed ornament.

St John the Baptist (1)

Font

Benchend

ONEHOUSE. It is still a tiny place, though not quite true to its name. On Sundays its people walk along a lane, through a farmyard, and across a meadow to a little church in the fields. The round flint tower leans westward as though it were weary after standing upright for seven centuries. The nave is a century younger, the chancel a mere infant. There is a big 13th century font, an old chest, and a pew with a quaint but venerable animal as an elbow-rest. In the churchyard is the mossy base of the old preaching cross; and looking out from the sunny wall of the church is the old mass dial from the days before clocks.

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