Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

This is a large East Anglian parish church in flint rubble with stone dressings, comprising an aisled nave and chancel, a west tower, a two-storey south porch, and a north vestry. The church was largely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, though it retains earlier work from the late twelfth century onwards.

The west tower, of three stages, probably dates from the late twelfth century in its lower part, though it was substantially rebuilt in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. It features a west door and trefoiled lancets in the lowest stage, and Y-tracery windows in the second and bell stages. A polygonal south stair turret does not rise the full height. The most striking feature is the tall, slender broach spire of the early fourteenth century, probably the earliest surviving in Suffolk. On its east face, the spire carries a clock with a bell cast in 1280. Both the aisles and nave clerestory are embattled.

The aisles are fourteenth-century in origin but were refenestrated in the fifteenth century with large Perpendicular windows of vertical tracery, each side displaying a consistent though different pattern. The nave clerestory has pairs of fifteenth-century two-light windows, and there is a round window in the nave east gable. The chancel clerestory is similar but has a plain parapet. The south chancel chapel continues the south aisle; its second window from the east steps up over a fifteenth-century priest's door. The north chancel chapel terminates in a two-storey north-east vestry with an embattled, low-pitched roof and two-light windows with square frames. The early fifteenth-century south porch is embattled with a low-pitched roof. Above its large outer opening is a row of three niches. Within it are the remains of vault springers. The fifteenth-century south door has multiple continuous mouldings; its pair of contemporary doors bear a band of quatrefoils and blind tracery in the heads. The north aisle door is fourteenth-century with weathered headstops.

The interior is spacious, with broad arcades and a chancel arch. The fifteenth-century north and south nave arcades comprise five bays with continuous outer orders and an inner order on polygonal responds with moulded capitals and bases. The four-centred chancel arch is similarly detailed. Former rood loft doors survive on either side of the chancel arch. A good early fourteenth-century tomb recess lies in the south aisle. The tower arch is low and fourteenth-century with mouldings dying into the walls, and above it is an opening or door into the tower. The two-bay north and south chancel arcades are late fourteenth or early fifteenth-century, with quatrefoil piers, round responds with moulded capitals and bases, and a hood mould with stops on the inner face. An Easter Sepulchre-type tomb occupies the chancel north wall, and squints connect the south chapel with the chancel. The north clergy vestry is vaulted and contains fifteenth-century panelling.

The nineteenth-century nave roof features shaped iron brackets on corbels. The steeply pitched aisle roofs have moulded beams and arched braces on corbels; the south aisle roof was reconstructed in the nineteenth century, the north aisle in 1968. The fifteenth-century chancel ceiling displays grotesques on the central bosses and nineteenth-century figures on the brackets.

A notable early to mid-fourteenth-century font survives, though partly re-cut in the nineteenth century. Polygonal in form, it displays delicate tracery niches on the bowl and stem, with angels and foliage around the base of the bowl. The exceptionally tall and delicate cover was made in 1925 by Charles Sidney Spooner. A fourteenth-century piscina stands in the south chapel; the piscina and sedilia in the chancel are nineteenth-century. Some medieval bench ends remain in the south chapel, and medieval misericords survive in the chancel. Fine fifteenth-century parclose screens stand at the ends of the north and south aisles, reset in their present positions in the twentieth century. Nave benches of 1869 have shaped ends with naturalistic floral carving. A timber pulpit dates from 1870. The church contains a good collection of ancient chests and a fine early eighteenth-century organ case brought from Donyland Hall in 1738.

Monuments include a fourteenth-century tomb recess in the south aisle with a cusped ogee arch and finial. A fifteenth-century tomb recess in the chancel north wall was clearly intended as an Easter Sepulchre. Several brasses of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries survive, including a fine pair of half-figures holding hands, to Richard and Elizabeth Glaufie, dated 1637. Wall tablets include one to Sarah Johnson, died 1793, by Regnart; a First World War memorial to the Reverend Frances Carter, died 1935, by Eric Gill and Charles Spooner; and four hatchments. Fragments of late medieval glass survive in the north chapel east window; nineteenth and twentieth-century glass includes windows by George Hedgeland and Hard and Hughes.

Two doors and a niche from a former south-east porch, demolished in 1855, are built into the churchyard wall. The fifteenth-century red brick Deanery Gatehouse forms an integral part of the church's setting.

The church stands on a site occupied since the Anglo-Saxon period, and the remains of an earlier church are said to have been discovered in the churchyard. The earliest surviving fabric is the tower, whose lower part dates to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century the church was already very large, as the aisle walls attest. It underwent great rebuilding in the fifteenth century, funded by the cloth trade, and contained chantry altars for at least five guilds. Rowland Taylor, the Marian martyr (1510–55), was rector at the time of his death. In the post-medieval period the church was refurnished with a double-decker pulpit, box pews, and a west gallery. Extensive restoration took place in the nineteenth century, including the removal of a two-storey south-east porch in 1855. The tower originally had a wooden parapet, which was removed and replaced in stone in the nineteenth century; this was itself removed in 1926.