Church of St Mary is a Grade I listed building in the Mid Suffolk local planning authority area, England. First listed on 15 November 1954. A Medieval Church.
Church of St Mary
- WRENN ID
- lapsed-forge-foxglove
- Grade
- I
- Local Planning Authority
- Mid Suffolk
- Constituency
- Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket MP: Dr Peter Prinsley (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 15 November 1954
- Type
- Church
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Church of St Mary, Drinkingstone Road, Gedding
- OS grid reference
- TL 951 581
- Coordinates
- 52.18684, 0.85399
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Mary is a Grade I listed parish church located on Drinkstone Road. It dates back to the medieval period and features a nave, chancel, and west tower. The building is constructed of flint rubble, with the upper part of the tower made from red brick. Freestone quoins are present, and the nave walls, which date from the 11th to 12th centuries, include areas of herringbone work. The church lacks parapets or parapet gables.
Inside, there are two 12th-century lancet windows in the nave, one of which has shallow carving. The north doorway features 11th to 12th-century jambs topped with a 13th-century hoodmoulded arched head. Significant alterations were made in the mid-14th century, including the addition of 2-light windows in the nave and chancel, a 3-light east window, and plain south doorways. The chancel arch is narrow and deeply splayed, with restored sidelights that have pinnacled hoodmoulds on the east face. A low-side window in the chancel is square and unembellished.
The 15th-century tower has flushwork patterns in the parapets, while the upper section is made of late 16th or early 17th-century red brick and features simple 2-light belfry windows. The nave face of the tower includes buttresses that rise from squinches, adorned with carved grotesques beneath. The nave has a scissor-braced coupled-rafter roof with a cornice moulded in the 14th-century style, while the chancel roof is likely of a similar date but is ceiled except for the cornice.
Notable interior features include an octagonal 14th-century font with traceried panelled sides, four 15th-century poppyhead benches, and another bench that may be crudely formed from the 17th century.
Local climate
Church of St Mary sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 86% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 93% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 50% of listed buildings. Of these, 18 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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- No EPC on record for this property
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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