Ipswich, Suffolk - St Margaret

St Margaret, LNK but with a sign saying it is open on Wednesdays from 9.30-3pm and Sundays 12-3pm during autumn and winter months so who knows what spring and summer may hold? I have to say that I was surprised to find it locked since it is in the heart of the town with constant footfall all around it but then I know nothing about Ipswich other than that it was historically a puritan stronghold so perhaps Ipswichians are all iconoclasts and the church is kept locked for its own protection. Having read Simon Knotts entry and Pevsner a well researched for opening times revisit is on the cards.

ST MARGARET, St Margaret’s Green. Certainly the most spectacular church in Ipswich. It is placed so that it presents itself fully to the approaching traveller, against the background of the old trees of Christchurch Mansion. It has one of the East Anglian clerestories with closely set windows, and it has lavish decoration all over it. The spandrels of the windows, the parapet and the battlements and the pinnacles - all are decorated. The aisle windows are Dec (intersected tracery on the N side), the W tower has two tall two-light bell-openings on each side, flushwork arcading on the top, and pirmacles. On the S side a clock of 1737 in a pedimented aedicule surround. S porch tall with flushwork decoration of the battlements, a flushwork-panelled front, and three niches above the entrance. S transept with flanking polygonal turrets. Dec arcades of five bays. Octagonal piers and double-hollow—chamfered arches. Low chancel allowing for three nave E windows, one of them circular. The chancel arch has crowns, fleurons, and shields on the responds. Splendid double-hammerbeam roof. Figures against the wall-posts. Decorated wall-plate. Baroque painting on the panels between the main timbers. - FONT. Damaged Perp bowl with eight angels. One holds a scroll with the inscription ‘Sal et Saliva’. - PLATE. Two Elizabethan Cups; Paten 1632; Flagon 1719; Salver 1751. - MONUMENTS. Sir William Roskin d. 1512. Arched recess and coarse panelling. Quatrefoil frieze above the canopy. - Edmund Withipoll, the builder of Christchurch Mansion, d. 1574. Slab with fine incised lettering.

Mee is uncommonly brief: The medieval church of St Margaret has a clerestoried nave with a painted roof of double hammerbeams, little figures under canopies bearing them up. There is a 15th century font with angels carved on it, an old coffin lid let into the wall, and a porch with three canopied niches 400 years old.

Flickr.