Washbrook, Suffolk

St Mary, in the care of the CCT and open, somewhat baffles me - it is a nice enough building and the location is cracking but, unpopular opinion coming up, doesn't seem to me to be anything particularly special, either inside or out.

The CCT entry reads as follows: "Despite being close to Ipswich, St Mary's lies remote and peaceful at the end of a winding path amongst picturesque trees and meadows. A Norman church rebuilt in the fourteenth century, it boasts: wonderful stone carvings in the chancel; lovely window tracery; canopied stalls; a piscina, a sedilia and an Easter Sepulchre. An 1866 restoration by Edmund Buckton Lamb provided the roofs and benches, the beautiful Victorian stained glass, and added a delightful baptistry to house the handsome fifteenth-century font".

As I noted, I agree that the location is special and I have to concede that the stalls etc are a peculiarity but I remain unconvinced overall - I'm almost certainly in a minority of one!

ST MARY. In a sheltered position, away from all traffic. Norman nave with two windows preserved. Surprisingly ornate Dec chancel. On the S as well as the N six seats in niches with crocketed ogee gables. Also in the iambs of the windows blank ogee arches. A bigger such arch for the Easter Sepulchre, and opposite it PISCINA and SEDILIA. The date is probably c. 1340-50. Perp W tower, its base with flushwork decoration. Brick battlements. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp. At the base four Lions, on the bowl four panels with demi-figures of angels and four with flowers. - (The tester of the former PULPIT, which was of the C17, is now a table in the vestry. - Fine iron HOUR-GLASS STAND*. LG)

* I missed this.

WASHBROOK. It is two miles from Washbrook’s old cottages on the hillside to the church hidden in the valley, a simple little place with a massive brick tower mostly of the 14th century, with two lancets older still. The chancel door opens on to somethin rare and unexpected, an array of sculptured chalk-canopied stalls with tiny faces on the arches and an elaborate stringcourse running above them. The chancel arch is chalk unadorned, but a delicately carved chalk bracket holds the old hourglass by the Jacobean pulpit*, and there is one patterned chalk panel inside a window and another near the vestry door. From the vestry, which has a table made from the pulpit’s sounding-board, we look through a peephole to the altar and the pinnacled tomb thought to be the resting-place of the founder of this pleasant church. In the old north porch is the 14th century font he knew, with its angels and flowers and four watching lions. Old beams and kingposts roof the nave; a little old chest is handsome with iron scrollwork.

* No longer extant.

Flickr.