Church of St Peter is a Grade II* listed building in the East Suffolk local planning authority area, England. A Medieval Church.
Church of St Peter
- WRENN ID
- broken-gateway-lake
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- East Suffolk
- Constituency
- Waveney Valley MP: Adrian Ramsay (Green)
- Country
- England
- Type
- Church
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Church of St Peter, Church Lane, Spexhall
- OS grid reference
- TM 378 801
- Coordinates
- 52.36799, 1.49215
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St. Peter is a parish church that dates from the 12th century, with additions and alterations made in the 15th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. It is constructed of random flint and features plaintiled roofs. The church consists of a nave, chancel, south porch, and a round battlemented west tower, which was rebuilt in 1911 after the earlier tower, believed to be Saxon, collapsed in 1725. The main structure is primarily Norman in style.
The church has a Norman north doorway to the nave, which features simple, partly defaced carving on the arch. There is an early 14th-century south doorway with multiple continuous mouldings, located within a porch that was rebuilt in 1733. The windows are Perpendicular in style, with two lights. The east wall was rebuilt in 1713 and showcases a trellis pattern of red brick on flint, along with two stepped diagonal buttresses, one of which is dated June 18th, 1713. A three-light east window with panel tracery was added in 1876. A flying buttress was added over the priest's door on the south side of the chancel in 1888.
The interior was extensively restored in 1876, including the roof, pews, tiles, and plaster. There are holy water stoups on each side of the south door. The church features an octagonal 15th-century font with a low base, a panelled shaft, and quatrefoils with shields around the bowl. The piscinae in the nave and chancel have identical cinquefoil cusping at the heads and chamfered jambs with broach stops. The north-west window of the nave contains 15th-century heraldic glass.
Additionally, there is a doorway and part of the stairs to the rood in the north wall of the nave, next to a panelled, but much restored, 17th-century pulpit. In front of the nave benches, there are remains of two 15th-century benches with poppyheads and further remains of four pairs in the chancel. A section of Jacobean panelling is located against the north wall of the chancel. The stained glass in the east window serves as a memorial to Queen Victoria. On the south nave wall, there are brasses commemorating John and Maria Browne and their family, dated 1591, 1593, and 1601.
Local climate
Church of St Peter sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 730 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 77% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 56% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 16 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 84% of listed buildings. Of these, 9 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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