Shimpling, Suffolk

If I was amazed to find St Peter, Cockfield, open I think staggered would be my reaction to finding St George unlocked - find it on Google Earth to see how isolated it is.

Sadly, despite its open status I found St George dark, cold and heartless - that might have been because the light was beginning to go and it felt like a Hammer House of Horror set but is more likely due to a thorough Victorian clean up, not, I'm afraid, my cup of tea but hats off for being open.

ST GEORGE. Reached along an avenue of lime trees. Mostly Dec, see the E window with a usual pattern of flowing tracery, the segment-headed S aisle windows, the N windows, and the arcade inside of low octagonal piers and arches with one chamfer and one hollow chamfer. The chancel S doorway has a frieze of dog-tooth inside, a motif usually earlier than the date of the church. - FONT. Odd, octagonal, probably C14. Stem with eight attached shafts. Bowl shallow with quatrefoils and tracery. - MONUMENTS. Elizabeth Plampin  d.1774. By R. Westmacott Sen. Woman standing by an urn on a sarcophagus. - Thomas Hallifax d. 1850. Unsigned. Niche with two angels in profile kneeling symmetrically against an altar with a cross over it.

SHIMPLING. An avenue of limes shades the way to its 14th century church. It has a 15th century font and a Jacobean table. Some of the windows casting their dim religious light have fragments of ancient glass, bits of 14th century canopies, and heraldic shields thought to be 12th century, precious fragments indeed, for glass so old is rarely to be seen; there is exceedingly little of it in England. Outside, on a sunny wall, is an old mass dial.

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Cockfield, Suffolk

I knew St Peter was going to be locked the moment I saw it - on its south side are two houses, to the east a barn and errrm that's it but to my not inconsiderable amazement it was open. Oh and it's very large and seems incongruously placed - perhaps the village moved away leaving it stranded with its two companions.

Even though, for a church this big, there's not a huge amount of interest I loved it just for being open and I think that's reason enough.

ST PETER. Quite big. Dec W tower with flushwork chequer pattern on the buttresses. Dec N aisle. Early C14 chancel, see the outlines of the windows inside, the buttresses with ogee headed niches, the Piscina, and the splendid, if grossly over-restored EASTER SEPULCHRE. Niche with three stepped steep gables with blank quatrefoils. Cusped and sub-cusped arches with crockets. Angle buttresses. Hardly any ogee forms yet (cf. e.g. Edmund Crouchback, Westminster Abbey). Perp S aisle and clerestory. Elaborate S aisle battlements. Fine S aisle roof with carved beams. S porch with a front with flushwork panelling. Three niches round the entrance. Doorway with fleurons and shields. The battlements are different from those of the S aisle. Tall Perp chancel windows. Arcades of five bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. - PULPIT. Jacobean. - STALLS. Not much survives, but it includes ends with tracery and poppy-heads and some minor MISERICORDS. - COMMUNION RAIL. With twisted balusters; late C17. - STAINED GLASS. (In the easternmost S aisle window four original heads.) -  E window by Kempe, 1889. -  PLATE. Two Flagons 1743; Alms dish 1759. - MONUMENT. James Harvey d. 1723. By N. Royce of Bury St Edmunds. Standing wall-monument. Coupled Corinthian columns against coupled Corinthian pilasters. Pediment. Bust on a short black sarcophagus. The quality is not high.

CHURCH COTTAGE. A handsome C15 cottage along the churchyard. Timber-framed with brick infilling. One original doorway.

COCKFIELD. It has an irresistible appeal to lovers of Robert Louis Stevenson, as the scene in which his genius was first called into activity. Scattered near a stream flowing to the Bret, it has a windmill, a gem of a farm, old houses with rare woodwork and fine chimneys, and near the peace memorial in the lane to the church two wonderful 14th century cottages, with massive beams supporting their low roofs.

The handsome clerestoried church, with its 15th century tower rising above the trees, has little heads watching warily above the doorway of the porch, fine pillars with moulded capitals carrying the nave arcades, a new font copied from the medieval one whose bowl is still here, and a handsome nameless tomb of the 14th century.

Keeping fragments of its ancient glass, the church has a beautiful window with New Testament scenes in memory of Churchill Babington, a kinsman of Macaulay who, after a brilliant career at Cambridge, where he was professor of archaeology, made notable contributions to scientific literature and came here to spend the last 22 years of his life as vicar. He won Mr Gladstone’s approval of his essay traversing the famous third chapter of Macaulay’s History dealing with the clergy of Stuart England, but his main delight was in nature and antiquities. He wrote on the birds and flowers of Suffolk, and collected such a host of antiquarian treasures as to make the vicarage a little museum. His wife was a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, who came here on a visit which had memorable results. He met here another guest, Sidney Colvin, who gave him his first introduction to a London editor, revised his first writings, and set him on the path to fame. The old vicar witnessed the first handshake of the two new friends, neither dreaming that one was to write his way to fame and the other to edit his works and write his life. Host, hostess, and guests are all gone now, and the little museum has lost its treasures, but the old vicarage in the fields is a place of pilgrimage to those who hold dear the author of Treasure Island and the imperishable essays.

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Bradfield St Clare, Suffolk

St Clare was locked but with a notice informing visitors that it is open from dawn to dusk at weekends from some date to another - I forget which dates but suspect it was summer months - which is not much good if you're visiting on a Wednesday in February, so I took exteriors and moved on to the more welcoming Cockfield.

ST CLARE. An unusual dedication. Nave, chancel, and W tower. No architectural interest, except for the roof, which has arched braces reaching high up to a collar. - BENCHES. Some simple ones, with poppy-heads. - PLATE. Cup of 1668.

BRADFIELD ST CLARE. All travellers to Italy may see St Clare, the friend of Francis of Assisi, lying in a glass case on the hilltop where she walked with him. This village is named after her*, and a farmhouse with a moat still wet round it was once St Clare Hall, a home of the monks of Bury; the church is the only one in England that bears her name. It is a gracious little place with a porch made new last century in memory of three dear old people. There is a carved oak reredos, the names in brass of five men who live for evermore, ancient timbers in the chancel roof, and windows in the 13th century walls through which we see the cornfields.

* This is nonsense - it is named after the St Clere family Lords of the manor back in the day.

Bradfield St George, Suffolk

St George was, I think, the most tranquil visit of the day, its setting is a rural idyll and its best feature is a very Catholic looking reredos depicting the Nativity with lots of gold and red - it's stunning. The pulpit and medieval poppyhead and St George stained glass are also worthy of mention.

ST GEORGE. A Norman window in the nave on the S side. A very charming Dec S doorway with a much moulded ogee arch. Perp three-bay arcade (four shafts and four fine hollows) and diverse Perp windows. Nave roof of low pitch with arched braces. Their spandrels have tracery. Perp W tower. On a W buttress the name John Bacon is recorded, no doubt as a donor. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, simple. -  PULPIT. Jacobean, with two tiers of short blank arches. - BENCH ENDS. With poppy-heads and traceried backs (N aisle). - STAINED GLASS. Lower half of the figure of a Knight (clerestory S), c. 1500. - PLATE. Cup 1661; Paten 1686; Flagon and Alms dish 1720.

BRADFIELD ST GEORGE. A pathway runs up between the poplars and a lake of floating lilies to the lime trees gathered about its handsome rectory and the medieval church. Its sturdy pinnacled tower and porch are 500 years old, the richly ornamented south doorway a century older. In the 15th century north aisle are a few old bench-ends, and in the 13th century chancel is a modern reredos with paintings of the Adoration of the Wise Men and one of St George - of England and of Bradfield.

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Stanningfield, Suffolk

I loved St Nicholas as much for its location, its quirky exterior and the faded, but still excellent, doom painting.

It sits away from the main body of the village with a farm and a hall as neighbours. At some time its tower fell and was replaced by what can only described as a pyramidical cap which gives it its quirky appearance and the Norman north door is fantastic.

ST NICHOLAS. Norman nave. Preserved one N and one S window and the N doorway. Shafts with decayed capitals, arch with slightly decorated zigzag. The church has an incomplete W tower and an uncommonly interesting chancel of c. 1300. The designer certainly liked personal tracery, see the E window with cusped intersections broken by a quatre-foiled circle at the top, the N windows with double-cusped quatrefoils in circles, and particularly the S windows with four pointed trefoils radially in a circle. Squint in the form of a quatrefoil diagonally from the chancel to the outside, that is really a low-side window. Nice, modest contemporary S doorway into the nave, with two orders of closely set fleurons in jambs and arches and a hood-mould with ballflower. - FONT. Octagonal, C14. Panelled stem. Bowl with shields in quatrefoils and panels with blank arches. - SCREEN. Simple, with one-light divisions. - WALL PAINTING. Big C15 Doom over the chancel arch. Dark and not well preserved. - MONUMENT. Good monument to Thomas Rokewode, Late Perp, chancel N wall. Tomb-chest with shields in quatrefoils. Segmental arch and cresting with shields.

STANNINGFIELD. It stirs us with dramatic memories of Gunpowder Plot, and of a Shakespearean might-have-been, and it has a pleasant appeal as the birthplace of a woman whose writings charmed readers and playgoers in Trafalgar and Waterloo days.

There are few houses in the village, but more at Hoggard’s Green near by, where, with thatched cottages grouped about the pond, stands an ancient dovecot and a massive wooden cross.

Everywhere the name of the Rookwood family speaks to us from the past. They had owned the manor three centuries before the Stuarts succeeded the Tudors, and had built their first home beside the Norman church. Only the fishponds and the moat remain from that old house, and it is near it, hidden among noble trees, with the top of its tower gone, that we find the church. We may come into it by two Norman doorways, one with zigzag and the other with flowers, one protected by a magnificent timber porch. There is Norman work in the nave, but the chancel, with a striking quatrefoil peephole near its arch, was a 14th century gift of the Rookwoods; the font bears their arms. There is a canopied Tudor tomb guarded by angels, the last resting-place of Thomas Rookwood, and many other members of the family are here, including Sir Robert, son of a man James the First sent to the scaffold. Over the chancel arch are traces of wall-paintings, and there is a screen which was carved 600 years ago. The benches have fine old poppyheads.

Coldham Hall, a mile away, succeeded the house by the church, being built in the reign of Elizabeth by, Robert Rookwood, father of the Rookwood of Gunpowder Plot.’ Untouched by the Reformation, the Rookwoods remained Roman Catholic and suffered grievously for their faith; but they lived happily here under the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts.

They had a magnificent stud of horses, one of the finest in the country, and Catesby, when the plans for the Plot were ripening, invited Ambrose Rookwood to join the conspiracy; he was to prepare a rising, for with his swift horses he would be helpful. Ambrose hired a chain of houses between the Severn and the Avon in Warwickshire, to which mysterious men, mounted on his horses, came riding day and night. He himself took Clopton House, which stood in grounds adjoining the Welcombe lands where Shakespeare was just building up an estate. The dramatist was there among his fields round Clopton House while Ambrose Rookwood in his “Hungarian riding cloak, lined all in velvet exceeding costly,” was at the house putting the finishing touches to his share of the Plot.

Clopton House was to be the nearest post to the general point of assembly for the rising after Guy Fawkes had fired his powder, but Rookwood, being little known in London, rode to the capital, and there, four days after his arrival, he was informed of the arrest of Guy Fawkes. The next morning he rode to Brickhill in Buckinghamshire, where he joined Catesby and galloped with him to Holbeach. There he was injured by an explosion of gunpowder stored by the conspirators.

Fighting to avoid arrest, he was wounded and overcome, imprisoned in the Tower, and executed, declaring himself penitent and wishing the king long life and conversion to Roman Catholicism.

It was from the home of her father here that Elizabeth Inchbald stole away to shape a career, first as an actress and afterwards as a novelist. She was a beauty, and famous as actress, playwright, and novelist of the days of the Georges; and now she is all but forgotten. Mrs Inchbald, who was really Elizabeth Simpson, the daughter of a farmer, married Joseph Inchbald the actor, and wrote a number of farces of which only their names remain, All on a Summer Day, which was hissed on the first night; Young Men and Old Women, Wives as They Were, Maids As They Are, and others. A romantic novel called A Simple Story is the piece of literature that has kept her name alive. It was written a generation after Richardson's Pamela and Fielding’s Torn Jones had established the English novel, and before Walter Scott had given it a new direction. Her work differed from any of theirs, and it is nearest in motive to Charlotte Bronté’s Jane Eyre. If she achieved no lasting fame she was well paid for her work as writer, dramatist, and journalist. She was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and a portrait of her hangsin the Garrick Club. Her reputation was blameless, and when she died she left instructions that her memoirs, for which she had been offered £1000, should be destroyed, so that if she made few enemies in her life she created no new ones after her death.

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Lawshall, Suffolk

All Saints was the first big church of the day and was remarkably uninteresting although I liked the painted angel corbels, the east window and a modern (millennium?) window in the south aisle.

ALL SAINTS. Quite big. Tall W tower, nave and aisles, clerestory and lower chancel, the latter in all its E.E. details Victorian. Arcade of four bays. Piers with four filleted shafts and in the diagonals a thin shaft between two hollows. Castellated capitals. Above the arches a string-course with demi-figures of angels. - FONT. C14, with tracery panels, recently rather garishly painted. - MONUMENT. J. B. van Mesdag d. 1945. Large inscription plate made up of small tiles. Designed by the distinguished typographer Jan van Krimpen and made at the Royal Goedewaagen workshops at Gouda.

LAWSHALL. It must have been a scene of titanic labours in bygone days. The hall, now a farmhouse, with walls six feet thick in places, has it is said the remains of a tunnel which led to Coldham Hall. Over the door are the arms of the Drurys and the date 1557. Ten years before the Armada sailed Queen Elizabeth and her retinue were here as guests, for the owners were rich and famous with a Speaker of the House of Commons and a great law-maker, among their ancestors.

Fine limes lead to the clerestoried medieval church, which, with its lofty tower, forms a noble picture, standing on some of the highest ground in Suffolk. In the spacious interior are graceful pillars, a finely carved cornice of angels and flowers, and a 15th century font rich with tracery. The best woodwork is that of a chest three centuries old, with shafts between bands of foliage beautifully wrought on its panels.

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Brockley, Suffolk

I'm not sure that any other church I've visited  to date can beat St Andrew in terms of its location; farm buildings to the west, hall to the south west and open fields everywhere else. A Victorian restoration has rendered it somewhat aseptic but nonetheless this is still a lovely church.

ST ANDREW. W tower with diagonal buttresses carrying flushwork panelling. On the base of the S wall of the tower an inscription commemorating Ricardus Coppyng, who no doubt gave the money for the building of the tower. Nave of c. 1300, chancel Dec. - In the S wall inside a big ogee-headed recess. - SOUTH DOOR. With interesting knocker and lock, probably also early c 14. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup; Flagon 1771; Almsdish 1817.

 
 

BROCKLEY. Its oldest neighbours, standing aloof, are the 14th century church, a mossy base of a Tudor churchyard cross, and a farmhouse which was once the hall and still has part of its ancient moat. The church tower has fine panelled buttresses and a stone inscribed with the name of Ricardus Coppynge, who builded well five centuries ago. The chancel has an old carved chair, the nave a splendid arched recess in its south wall, and the door is 500 years old with four lizards on its handle.

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