Parish Church Of St Maragret

Parish Church of St Margaret

This is a parish church dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, built of plastered flint rubble with limestone dressings. The west tower is constructed of red brick in English bond, and the roofs are covered with handmade red clay tiles. The building is orientated north-east to south-west.

The chancel, nave, and south porch date to the mid-15th century, while the west tower was built in the early 16th century. The church underwent minor restoration in 1850.

The chancel's east gable features cusped and gabled kneelers with an apex stone. The east window contains five cinquefoiled lights with vertical tracery beneath a two-centred arch, with moulded head and label. The north and south walls each have two windows of two cinquefoiled lights with tracery under segmental-pointed heads with moulded labels. Between the windows in the south wall is a doorway with moulded jambs and a two-centred arch of two moulded orders, with a moulded label. The chancel arch is two-centred, comprising one moulded order on the west side and two chamfered orders on the east side, with semi-octagonal attached shafts to the responds, complete with moulded capitals and bases. The chancel roof is 15th century, composed of eighteen couples of seven cants with scissor-braces formed from short timbers tenoned into the frames, with moulded wallplates.

The nave's east gable has kneelers and apex stone similar to those of the chancel. The north wall contains two windows: the eastern has three cinquefoiled and sub-cusped lights with tracery in a two-centred head with moulded external reveals, label, and rear-arch; the western has two cinquefoiled lights with transomed tracery under a segmental-pointed head. Between these is a blocked north doorway, its segmental-pointed rear-arch, door rebate, and original pintles still visible. The south wall has two windows corresponding to those of the north wall, with a south doorway between them featuring jambs and a two-centred arch of three moulded orders with a moulded label. The nave roof is of seven cants with plastered soffit, incorporating three moulded tiebeams mounted on wallpieces supported by simple head-corbels, mostly carved grotesquely, with short curved braces and blind tracery in the spandrels.

The west tower is built of red brick with diaper patterns in blue headers and was constructed in 1519 for Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford. It is three storeys high without external division, featuring diagonal buttresses, a semi-octagonal south-east stair-turret, and a crenellated parapet. The tower arch is four-centred with three orders, chamfered on the east face and square on the west, with chamfered responds. A doorway in the south wall provides access to the stair-turret and has a moulded segmental arch. The west window has a four-centred arch of alternating red and blue bricks, though the remainder is 19th century. The second stage contains loops in the north and south walls. The bell-chamber has windows in each wall of two pointed lights beneath four-centred heads, with decayed stone panels above the windows in the east and west walls. The stair-turret is lit by plain loops and contains a stone panel in its south wall and a recess for another.

The south porch has a four-centred entrance archway with responds featuring semi-octagonal attached shafts with moulded capitals and bases. The moulded label bears male and female headstops, possibly introduced later. The east and west walls each have a window that is 19th century except for the splays and segmental-pointed rear-arch. The porch roof is of seven couples, similar to the chancel roof but with moulded and crenellated wallplates.

Interior features include two 15th-century piscinae, one in the chancel and one in the south wall of the nave, each cinquefoiled with foiled drains and original wooden credence shelves. The chancel piscina's head is grooved for glass. The sills of the north-east windows in the chancel and nave are carried down to form seats. A 15th-century stoup stands in the east wall of the porch, with a round head and restored bowl.

The nave walls contain 15th and 16th-century wall paintings. On the north wall is a mid to late 15th-century representation of a timber-framed building with close brick nogging in oblique patterns and a tiled roof, with a figure and horse in the foreground. Late 16th-century conventional foliage is superimposed at the west side. The south wall shows traces of a late 15th-century figure with diapered and quatrefoiled background, along with late 16th-century foliage and part of a black-letter text.

Inside the tower walls are heraldic devices of the De Veres in moulded plaster: a winged beast in the north wall, a small plinth and head in the south wall, a molet, and a headless boar on a shelf.

The 15th-century font has an octagonal stem with recessed sides and moulded shafts and bases at the angles, set on a base incorporating a step. The bowl is 19th or 20th century, with the decayed original bowl inverted beside it. The early 17th-century pulpit is octagonal with guilloche arcades in the panels, restored with 19th-century turned marble shafts. Fifteenth-century glass remains in the head of the east window, mostly tabernacle work, with fragments reset in the north-east window of the nave. The south doors of the nave are 15th century, featuring continuous curved and moulded edge-timbers, stiles and ledges riveted at crossings, and humped planks with 19th-century fillets.

Two bells hang in the tower: the first by Miles Graye, dated 1607, and the second by Thomas Gardiner, dated 1729.

External memorial slabs against the south wall of the chancel commemorate John Clerke, senior (died 1681) and his wife Anne (died 1692), with shields of arms. Inside, another memorial to John Clerke (died 1722) also displays a shield of arms. Stone bosses and ornaments of uncertain origin are set into the outer and inner walls, some collected from Bury St. Edmunds by Mrs. C.W. Brett in the early 20th century. A small terracotta female figure in the outer west wall of the nave, possibly representing the Countess of Oxford, may be original to the church.

The tower contains a framed coat of arms of George III, dated 1764, with a broken pediment, and late 16th to early 17th-century panelling in the dado.

The church is remarkable for being almost entirely of the 15th century, apart from the tower, with minimal restoration and an interior unobstructed by monuments or later features.