Birdbrook, Essex

Having set off home from Wixoe I detoured via Birdbrook - more varied my route home than detoured but you catch my drift. The exterior of St Augustine was nothing exciting and seemed to promise a dreary interior but on entering the church there was an overwhelming, pleasantly so, smell of linseed oil.

The smell is explained in the sanctuary and chancel; in the mid 1960s, the sanctuary was panelled throughout with carvings, by Ken Mabbitt (sadly Googling him is remarkably uninformative which is odd given the quality of this work), of the arms of the patrons of the church, and the shield of St Augustine on the north wall. From north to south they are of the Peche family, Edward I, Westminster Abbey, the Tyrrell family, Elizabeth I, Gent family, Alleyn family, Thompson family, Howard family, Rushe family and finally, Clare college, Cambridge. The communion table is decorated with a frieze of foliage incorporating such creatures as a mouse and birds, while the arms of the sedilia, on the south wall, has perching owls. The carving on the linen chest reflects the rural life of the parish, a woodman, reaper, fruit picker and a shepherd.

The chancel panelling matches the sanctuary, but with badges of the regiments of Birdbrook men killed in the First and Second World wars and the Korean war together with the names of the fallen. The arms of the choir stalls are carved with different animals or birds. To match the linen chest, the front of these stalls are carved with a frieze of oak leaves and acorns (significant, as all Mabbitt’s work was constructed in oak), nuts, vine leaves and grapes, amongst which there are birds, a butterfly, a bee, a squirrel and harvest mice. At the south west end of the choir stalls are tiny carvings of humorous faces in a medieval style. All this work dates to the late 1960s.

The stained glass of the east window was put in to commemorate the generosity of Mrs Edith Clara Young. The two stained glass windows on either side of the chancel depict, on the south, Inguar the Saxon thegne who was known as holding the land on which the church was built; hence the view of the church being constructed and Richard FitzGilbert, Earl of Clare, patron after the conquest; hence the scenes from the Bayeux tapestry. On the other side of the chancel are Walter de Wenlok, Abbott of Westminster Abbey and Dr. William Webb master of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Both of the portraits are authentic, taken from true likenesses. These two windows were executed by Rupert Moore.

The Joy here is in the thoroughly modern fittings and furnishings – I never thought I’d be so bowled over by refurbishments dating to the 60’s, 70’s and later but this has been so lovingly, and sympathetically, undertaken that St Augustine is a church to remember.

BIRDBROOK. Some of its old houses have been here about 500 years with overhanging storeys resting on curved brackets. The church has something much older still, for in its walls are Roman tiles used by the 13th century builders. There are three striking lancet windows at the east, with stone heads keeping watch outside, and on the tracery of a 14th century window of the chancel is scratched the name of Thomas Cersey in ancient lettering. The lofty roof of the nave is 500 years old, and there is woodwork of the same time in the choir-stalls. The graceful altar rails are 18th century. In the sanctuary is a medieval coffin lid, and by the altar is something we have not seen before by any altar - a fireplace.

On a stone in the tower is recorded the remarkable experience of Martha Blewit who died in 1681 at the Swan Inn, which is still in the village. She married nine husbands, but the ninth outlived her, whereupon the parson of Birdbrook chose as his text at her funeral the words, "Last of all the woman died also." This same stone also records that in the next century Robert Hogan married seven wives, so that there were between these two people 16 marriages. A less exciting monument is to the antiquarian Thomas Walford, who went about England a hundred years ago and wrote a book called The Scientific Tourist.

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Clare, Suffolk

SS Peter & Paul is a simply huge Suffolk wool church but, following a Dowsing visitation in 1643, strangely soulless. Having said that there are still various points of interest including the south door, the medieval eagle lectern and east window amongst others.

ST PETER AND ST PAUL. The church stands in a spacious treeless churchyard, and one somehow does not consider it as part of the town, although this stretches around it in all directions. C13 W tower with a W doorway with two orders of shafts and a hood-mould with nailhead decoration. Lancet windows higher up. The W window of five lights is of course Perp, as is the frieze with shields and quatrefoils below it. The tower is unfortunately a little short for the church. Large Perp church, but inside it the arcade piers (six bays) are of the c I4 and re-used in the remodelling. They are quatrefoiled and keeled. Of the CI4 the s porch with its windows with Y-tracery. It is vaulted and has carved bosses. The second bay of vaulting was half cut off when the aisle of the C I4 building was widened later. To the E of the porch is a contemporary chapel (cf. St Gregory Sudbury etc.), and the arch of this towards the aisle is again C14. Beneath this chapel and the porch is a vaulted bone-hole. The rest of the church is all Late Perp, and mostly Early Tudor, except for the chancel, which was all but rebuilt in 1617-19, an example of the effortless Perp survival of those years. There are few (if characteristic) differences between the C15 and the C17 work. The motif of the stepped arches of the lights in the three-light window is the same. In the Perp Work it appears in S aisle and S chapel as well as N aisle and N chapel and clerestory. At the E end of the nave is the most easily remembered motif of the church, the two rood-stair turrets with their crocketed spirelets (cf. Lavenham). The clerestory windows are not doubled, as in so many East Anglian churches, but as all the windows of aisles and clerestory are slender and closely set, the effect has the same erectness as at Long Melford and Lavenham. The remodelling of the interior made it very airy. The C14 piers received castellated capitals, the arches crocketed hood-moulds. Shafts rise from the piers to the roof. Above the arches a string-course with demi-figures of angels and fleurons. Chancel arch and chapel arches go with the nave. - FONT. Simple, octagonal, Perp. - SCREENS. Remains of the rood-screen re-used at the entrance to the S chapel. Parclose screen at the E end of the S aisle, fine wide one-light divisions. - STALLs. Jacobean, some with Jacobean poppy-heads. - GALLERY in the porch chapel. Jacobean with balusters. - COMMUNION RAIL. With twisted balusters, late C17. - DOORS. N and S doors and N chancel door with tracery and a border of foliage trail. - LECTERN. Brass, with a big eagle. The same type as at St Margaret King’s Lynn and Redenhall Norfolk (Oman’s type II). - PLATE. Richly embossed silver-gilt Cup, probably Flemish. - Cup 1562; Paten 1680; Flagon 1713.

UPDATE: Aug 2012 revisited to cover Clare Priory which was undergoing a large extension - I'm not sure I approve but it will be interesting to see once complete in 2013.

CLARE PRIORY. Founded for Austin Friars in 1248 by Gilbert de Clare, the earliest house of the order in England. Of the buildings most of the features which remain are early C14, namely one doorway in the former Cellarium, later the Prior’s lodging and later still the house of the Frende and Barker families, then a vaulted chamber at the s end of this range with one two-light window (single-chamfered ribs), the Lavatorium arches (see below), the doorway to the Refectory (see below), the Chapter House entrance from the former E walk, built, it is known, by Elizabeth de Burgh between 1310 and 1314, and the remains of the church which was indeed consecrated in 1338. The church was 168 ft long and had a chancel of six bays with a S chapel and s vestry, a narrow central tower, and a nave of six bays with N aisle but no S aisle. The last two bays of the N aisle were a chapel. Of this a doorway from the nave to the cloister remains, and in addition the s wall, the Sedilia with curious cusped blank arches against the back wall, and the blocked doorway to the S chancel chapel. The monument to Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I, who died in 1305 was to the W of the sedilia and cut into them. Of the domestic buildings of the priory the walls of the cloister remain. In the E wall are the entrances to the Chapter House and the dormitory staircase. The Dormitory - a unique case - lay 12 ft further E, separated from the cloister range by an irregular quadrangular courtyard. The Dormitory at the S end overlapped the Infirmary. This has closely set upper windows in blank arches. Reredorter (i.e. lavatories) at the E end of the Infirmary and at r. angles to it. Of the Refectory in the s range parts of the walls stand up. In the S wall is a projection for the Reader’s Pulpit, at the W end of the N wall the Lavatorium, or friars’ hand-washing place. The Cellarium, i.e. W range, was converted into the prior’s residence in Early Tudor days, and of this time are the low mullioned windows with arched lights and the ceiling in the Hall, i.e. the room behind the C14 doorway. Then the Elizabethan period inserted a mullioned and transomed window in the front and a square bay (built of stone, not of flint) at the back. (Very fine C17 panelling in the upper room.) To the S of the Cellariurn is an irregular little wooden cloister of which the W and S ranges remain, complete but altered. The N range was of stone. The E range was widened to form a kitchen, which stood between Cellarium and Refectory. The date is probably the C15. Later on, in the C16-17, the cloister became an inner courtyard, and an entrance and back door were made through the S range.

You'd be hard pressed to tell:

CLARE. With delightful old houses, a fine and spacious church, something of an ancient priory, and the foundations of a proud Norman castle, it is as fascinating an old town as one could wish to see. Its name plunges us into history, for these lands belonged to one of the greatest of our ancient families, the long line of the Earls of Clare, which began with a follower of the Conqueror. Gilbert, the seventh earl, was one of the most powerful men in the land in King John’s miserable reign, and it was his son Richard who founded the priory. Another Gilbert, the ninth earl, married a king’s niece and then a king’s daughter, and only with the death of his son at Bannockburn did the long line come to an end. His daughter Elizabeth became the Lady of Clare, and it is through her that the name of this Suffolk town is on everybody’s lips at Cambridge, for she endowed and re-founded the second oldest college in the University.

What is left of the old priory is built into a house still called after it. There are parts of the cloister arches, old windows of the chapter house, massive buttresses, a vaulted roof, and some fine panelling and carving. Another building, once probably the refectory, is 60 feet long, and we noticed a fine old garden wall. It was here, in a lovely chapel built by herself, that they laid Joan of Acre, the daughter of Edward the First and his Eleanor. She had married the ninth Earl of Clare, 17 years before.

The castle across the Stour stands where a Saxon fortress stood, but only fragments of its foundations and its 13th century keep are left. The mound where the keep stood is about 60 feet high, and from it are fine views of the countryside.

A thrilling find of last century in these foundations takes us back to Edward the Third, for it is believed to be a treasure he lost, a golden crucifix and chain now in the keeping of Windsor Castle. It is ornamented with four big pearls, and so made that the figure of Our Lord can be removed.

The priory and the castle we look at with the eye of imagination, but not so the ancient church, for its beauties speak for themselves, and the Roman bricks in its walls are the oldest possessions Clare has. The tower is 13th century, with walls four feet thick, a fine doorway, and a lofty tower arch; but the body of the church was refashioned in the 15th century, and the chancel altered again in the 17th. The nave pillars are the 13th century ones raised on high bases and used again; and above them, below the big clerestory windows, are carvings of heads and angels and foliage. Both porches are 14th century and both have fine old doors richly carved. The south porch has a handsome vaulted roof, and over it is an 18th century sundial telling us rather abruptly to go about our business.

In this light and spacious interior are some interesting things. In Flemish brass, 400 years old, is an eagle lectern, with three dogs at the foot, said to be the gift of Queen Elizabeth and certainly one of the finest we have seen among England’s 50 old ones. In lovely old woodwork are choir-stalls carved in fine black oak, and a screen with beautiful tracery under a cornice of pairs of beasts supporting crowns. A 15th century chapel has a fine Jacobean gallery pew approached by a staircase and held up on posts, and attached to it are three old iron candlesticks. The east window is bright with heraldic glass made just after Shakespeare died, and a beautiful memorial window shows the Crucifixion, St Michael, and St George.

Among the other possessions of the church are a well-panelled 15th century font, a huge old ironbound chest, a 16th century bell, three chairs made of old poppyheads, a Jacobean table and altar rails of the same period, a modern pulpit effectively carved with tracery, and a big earthenware jar which belonged to the bell ringers 200 years ago. A lovely chalice used here is said to have come over with the Armada as a goblet.

The vicarage is an Elizabethan house justly proud of its panelling, and by the churchyard is a beautiful priest’s house built a few years before the Tudor Age began. Its gable is lovely with a traceried bargeboard, and one of the diamond-paned windows has a wooden corbel carved with heraldry. Some of the old houses in the town are finely timbered and plastered, and some have lovely gardens by the Stour. In the marketplace there is a house with a crypt covered by a huge vaulted roof, and on the front of the Swan Inn is a remarkable wooden sign, perhaps a window corbel 500 years ago. It is carved in relief with a swan chained to a tree, and has on the back a tree laden with fruit.

A cottage a mile away by the road at Chilton has the longest history of any house here, for it was a chapel in the 12th century, and still has Norman windows and some signs of the work of 13th century builders. In the Civil War it was used as a powder magazine.

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Wixoe, Suffolk

St Leonard is kept locked but with a keyholder listed - sadly I'd run out of time so I admired the Norman dogtooth arch of the south door, took a couple of exteriors and left for home vowing to return.

It is not known when or why the church at Wixoe was dedicated to St Leonard. Nearly 180 medieval churches in England are dedicated to him, however. As patron saint of pregnant women and prisoners of war he would have been good to have on your side at a time when most women were undernourished and at risk in pregnancy and childbirth, and with many men involved in Crusades and other conflicts, including civil war.

UPDATE: Aug 2012 I gained access after several revisits and for a tiny church there's much of interest - nothing earth shattering but it packs a punch but what a shame the apse is no longer extant.

ST LEONARD. Nave and chancel with weather boarded bell-turret. Nave and chancel are Norman, as is seen in the treatment of the flint walling and also the S doorway with one order of shafts with scalloped capitals and a zigzag in the arch, and the outline of the N doorway.* All windows C19 or C20. - STAINED GLASS. E window signed by Cakebread, Robey & Co. c. 1892. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup and Paten; Cup 1706; Paten on foot 1728. - MONUMENT. The following inscription appears in large and dignified letters on a plate in the chancel floor: ‘The Entrance into the Vault of Henry Berkeley Esq. and Dorothy his wife containing Ten Foot Square.’

* The church originally had an apse (P. G. M. Dickinson).

WIXOE. It has a simple church with Norman masonry in its walls, a fine Norman doorway with bold zigzag, and a wooden bellcote with a bell thought to have first rung out about 1460, when the Red Rose and the White were struggling for the crown.

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Stoke by Clare, Suffolk

You enter St John the Baptist through the north door and find yourself in a light but somewhat shabby nave which has traces of wallpaintings, some fine brasses and as a curiosity a doom painting at the end of the north aisle hidden away behind the organ (thus making it very hard to photograph). Why a doom painting would be located here rather than on the chancel arch is beyond me.

There are several fine brasses under various carpets and the Elwes chapel on the south side has some interesting modern glass.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. Big Perp church. The tower is Dec. It belonged to an aisleless church with a chancel and a N Vestry of two storeys. The ceiling beams of this and an upper doorway still exist in the N wall of the present chancel. When the new church was built in the C15 it was placed somewhat further N, so that the former nave S wall became the S wall of the aisle, and the W respond of the S arcade stood against the middle of the blocked former tower arch. The Perp windows are nearly all of the same design, with straight-sided arches to the individual lights. Nave and aisles and clerestory. Projecting transeptal S chapel, probably part of the other church. The arcade piers quatrefoil with keeled foils; castellated capitals of the same design as at Clare. The piers are probably re-used, also as at Clare. Double-hollow-chamfered arches. The chancel arch of the same design. - PULPIT. Richest Perp, the richest in the county, and very small. Two tiers of tracery panels. Money was left towards its making in 1498. - BENCHES. With traceried fronts and poppy-heads. - WALL PAINTING. Doom, at the E end of the N chapel, assigned to the 1550s by Mr Rouse. - (STAINED GLASS. Fragments of the C15 in the S transept, including a post-mill. LG) - PLATE. Flagon 1674. - BRASS. Unknown Lady, early C16, 18 in. figure.

STOKE-BY-CLARE. Its church and its priory have much to remind us of one of our great reforming churchmen, Matthew Parker, who attended Anne Boleyn on the scaffold and was Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth. He was the last dean the college of priests which developed from the priory founded 800 years ago, and in some of the thick walls still standing are the hiding-places where he sheltered Nicholas Ridley. These old walls are in a park by the church, part of a house still called Stoke College. What is now the library was once a chapel and there are fragments of the old windows and kitchens. The brick tower of the priory porter is at the entrance of the churchyard.

The village church has grown from the priory church, keeping its crow-stepped south porch, a chantry on the north side, and the 14th century tower, which has a very old clock still striking on a bell from the priory chapel. The nave was restored by Matthew Parker when he became dean, and very familiar to him must have been the grand little 15th century pulpit, as fine a possession as Stoke has. Perhaps the smallest pulpit in Suffolk, it stands on a slender stem and is richly carved with beautiful tracery, the sides divided by pinnacled buttresses. More old carving is on the poppyheads and panels of the chancel stalls, and close by are two beautiful old chairs. The vestry has a 17th century altar table, and an ancient chest with elaborate ironwork in the form of two trees. The south chapel has still a little old glass, in which is something rarely seen in a window, a perfect windmill. We have seen one also in a window at Long Melford.

Three old people are here in brass, a woman who died about the time Matthew Parker came, and a man and woman of the generation after his. Buried here in the 18th century was John Elwes the miser, who lived like a beggar and died worth half a million. His miserly spirit was evidently inherited, for his rich mother starved herself to death. He was a good classical scholar. He lived on partridges, wore dirty old clothes, would not have his shoes cleaned lest it should wear them out, allowed the rain to fall through his roof, and one of his stories is that when he cut his legs on a sedan chair he had the doctor for one and looked after the other himself, he beating the doctor by a fortnight. Yet this mean fellow was three times MP. He thought of marrying a servant girl but his memory went and he probably forgot; he died a bachelor and happily left no progeny to carry on his life so not-worth-while.

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Ashen, Essex

St Augustine was locked but with keyholders listed however I had neither the time, inclination or top up credit to track down the key so did exteriors and left.


ST AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. One small lance window in the nave indicates a C13 origin. The W tower with diagonal buttresses and battlements was added about 1400, the brick stair-turret with the battlements on a trefoiled corbel-frieze about 1525. The chancel dates from 1857. - DOOR in S doorway, with damaged C13 ironwork. - BENCHES. A few fragments in the nave. Also an inscription in Roman capitals, dated 1620, which reads : ‘This hath bin the churching the mearring stool and so it shall be still’. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of c.1570. - MONUMENTS. Brass to a Knight of c. 1440, the figure 21 in. long (nave, E end). - Luce Tallakarne d. 1610, an odd design with termini caryatids and between them decoration with panels, a shield, and the inscription plates.

ASHEN. From the street of this upland village we look over the Stour into Suffolk. Its flint tower was built about 1400, and the brick turret was new about 1520; but two of the bells (called Thomas and Alice) were made 600 years ago, and the third is 15th century. The church is small, but very old, the nave having been built by the Normans and the 13th century men. A porch of Shakespeare’s day covers a doorway 200 years older, making a frame for a door with 13th century hinges.

There are two little pews 500 years old, a nave roof about the same age, a carved chair of the 18th century, and a curious panel of 1620 which tells us it has been the marrying stool and "so it shall be still." In the nave are brass portraits thought to be John and Frances Hunt, who would be alive when the victory of Agincourt was the talk of the land. John, in armour, stands on a lion; and looking up at Frances is a little dog with bells on its collar.

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Poslingford, Suffolk

My run of good luck had to end and so it proved with St Mary the Virgin - locked with no sign of a keyholder. I took the exteriors and headed off for Clare.

ST MARY. Very restored. Norman nave with one N window, a fragment of the N doorway, and a good s doorway with one S order of shafts with finely decorated scalloped capitals and some geometrical decoration on the abaci. Tympanum with stars, rosettes, and interlace. W tower of the late C13 with triple-chamfered arch towards the nave. Chancel with late C13 windows. Nave with one Dec window with reticulated tracery. Nice Perp S porch of brick with three brick niches above the entrance and brick windows. Nice niche inside a Perp nave window. - SCREEN. Tall, with two-light divisions, segmental arches and tracery over. - PAINTING. C13 scrolls in a chancel window.

POSLINGFORD. It has some delightful thatched cottages with a myriad colours in their gardens, and a medieval church. Most of the church is 15th century, but its ancient brick porch, with niches under its crow-stepped gable, shelters a Norman doorway adorned with exquisite flowers. In the embattled tower is an old chest and a bell brought from the ruined Chipley Abbey a mile away. The chancel has traces of red wall-paintings, including a figure with a gabled building in his hand, probably representing the founder of the church; in the vestry is a copy of a Doom painting revealed last century and unhappily destroyed. The best possession of the church is the 15th century screen with grand tracery and arches, and little flowers hanging from it.

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Pentlow, Essex

This was my third attempt at finding SS Gregory & George (success was due to making a note of the address before departure) and, despite it being locked with no keyholder listed, I was blown away - regular readers will know I'm a sucker for a round tower and an apse.

Having read Mee and Googled the church I do really wish it was left open - it sounds fascinating.

The Church (St. Gregory,) is an interesting structure of great antiquity, having a semicircular east end, and a round tower, containing five bells. The architecture is a mixture of the pure Norman and pointed styles, and the large stone font has a wooden covering, ornamented in the florid style of the time of Henry VII. The walls of the tower are of flint, 4 feet thick. On the north side of the chancel is Kemp’s Chapel, in which is a very fine tomb, on which are recumbent effigies of Judge Kemp, his lady, and his son John, who died in the early part of the 17th century. Round the tomb are 14 kneeling figures of children. The Chapel window is filled with stained glass, and the roof is divided into compartments, with Gothic quartre-foils. In the chancel is a curious old tomb of the Feltons, who were connected by marriage with the noble family of Hervey.

ST GEORGE. Nave and chancel are Norman. The apse is completely preserved, with its three windows. As for the nave the W doorway survives. It now leads into the tower, one of the round towers of Essex, and a late one, C14 according to the E windows. It may replace an earlier one, but when the nave was built, there obviously was no tower yet in the W, or else the doorway would not have been enriched by columns (one order with decorated scalloped capitals) and the little animal’s head above the arch. The N chapel was added to the chancel in the C16. It has stepped brick gables to the W and E and Late Perp windows. The E window seems C15 and may be re-used. The chapel has a charming panelled tunnel-vault. It houses the MONUMENT to George Kempe d. 1606, John Kempe d. 1609, and his wife, three recumbent effigies on a tomb-chest with kneeling children against the front of the chest. The Royal Commission assumes that the chapel was built for this monument. But can that really be the case? Another MONUMENT in the chancel. Edmund Felton d. 1542 and wife. Tomb-chest with shields on cusped panels; no figures. - FONT. Square, with angle colonnettes, Norman. The sides decorated with a cross and interlace and leaves, a star, branches etc. - all very stylized. - FONT COVER. Square with muted front. Niches with nodding ogee arches. The canopy with buttresses, canopies etc., crocketed and ending in a finial. - PLATE. Cup and Cover of 1724; Paten also of 1724; Flagon of 1722.

Among the old houses of Pentlow are Paine’s Manor with a carved beam of Shakespeare’s day; Bower Hall of about 1600 with original chimneys and a 15th century barn; and Pentlow Hall of about 1500, with much old woodwork, a line bay window of Elizabeth’s day, and an oriel with 16th century glass showing a hawking scene and shields. It is charming from the churchyard, looking under a great cedar and across the moat still wet. The fine church tower is remarkable as being one of the six round towers of Essex, with walls four feet thick. It was probably added in the 14th century to the nave and apsidal chancel built by the Normans, and protects the Norman west doorway, which is carved at the top with a muzzled bear. The 15th century chancel arch is wide and very high, and a flat arch leads to a chapel of about 1600. There is a 16th century chest, a 17th century table, twisted altar rails a little younger, and scraps of 14th century glass in the east window. But finer than anything is a huge Norman font elaborately ornamented on its four sides, the cover a rich piece of 15th century work with canopies and pinnacles. A Tudor altar tomb in the chancel is the sleeping-place of Edmund and Frances Felton, and a great tomb in the chapel has figures of George Kempe of 1606, his son John who died three years later, and John’s wife Elinor in an elaborate headdress and tight-waisted gown. The men are carved in their furred robes, and on the front of the tomb are kneeling figures of the children of John and Elinor, eight daughters with their hair brushed back, and four curly headed sons in cloaks. It is an impressive monument to three generations of an Essex family in the days when Shakespeare was writing his plays.

A window of St Gregory and St George is in memory of Felix Edward Bull who began his ministry in 1877 and preached for 50 years; and a testimonial hanging on the organ tells of Sarah Clark, who played her first voluntary in the year the Crimean War began, and her last two years after the shadow of the Great War was lifted from Europe. For 66 years she was organist, and for 43 she was at the organ while Felix Bull was in the pulpit, a wonderful fellowship of prayer and praise in this small place.

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