Church Of St Mary

This is a medieval parish church at Woolpit with a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, south porch, and west tower. It is built mainly of flint rubble with freestone dressings, and has leaded roofs with parapets and parapet gables, though the nave roof has lost its parapets.

The chancel contains a 13th-century south doorway with nook shafts. Dating from around 1300 are a double piscina and an east window with good net tracery, inner shafts of marble, and image niches in the buttresses at the eastern corners. A north chancel doorway of similar date leads into a 19th-century rebuilt vestry. The chancel walls were raised at some point, probably in the early 16th century, to accommodate remodelled windows.

The nave has a 5-bay arcade. The south side is of mid-14th-century character, with 2-light mid-14th-century windows in the south wall. At the south-east corner of the aisle is a niche for the image of Our Lady of Woolpit set within a window reveal. The tall chancel arch has similar mouldings and pier capitals. The north arcade is of similar but later 14th-century character, with early 15th-century windows and doorway in the north aisle.

The most distinctive feature is the nave clerestory and roof, built around 1439–51. It has a fine double-hammerbeam roof in 10 bays with a longer eastern bay that leaves room for an integral vaulted canopy of honour with restored decoration. The roof is heavily moulded and brattished, with carved spandrels on all the braces and a canopied figure standing beneath each truss. Although the angels attached to the cornice, wall posts, and hammerbeams were restored in the 19th century, most of the remaining work is medieval. The aisle roofs were also renewed in 1439–51 in similar character. Beneath each main truss are canopied figures, while at the intermediate trusses the principal rafter is carved in the form of a pair of downward-looking angels.

The chancel roof was rebuilt in the 17th century in 5 bays of archbraced collar-beam trusses, though the 15th-century cornice remains. The rafters are from an earlier 14th- or 15th-century canted single-rafter roof, and the bosses also come from the previous roof.

The south porch, added around 1439–51, is one of the finest in Suffolk. It contains a parvise chamber above, and its south face is entirely of freestone panels. The interior is fan-vaulted with well-carved bosses at the intersections. The inner doorway has a crocketted hood-mould and a frieze of carved crowns, fleurons, and lion heads in a casement. The outer doorway is similar but has two small image niches set within the moulding on each side. The buttresses have two tiers of stools for images, and 5 more once stood beneath ogee-headed canopies above the entrance. The side walls have chequered flushwork, and the parapets have pierced quatrefoiled merlons and pinnacles at the corners. The side windows also have ogee-headed and pinnacled hood-moulds.

The tower fell in 1702 and was repaired in 1708, but it fell again in 1852. It was entirely rebuilt by R.M. Phipson in the Decorated style with a tall freestone spire supported by flying buttresses from the parapets.

Interior fittings include a simple moulded late 14th-century octagonal font. A 15th-century rood screen with rich painting at the base (mostly restored) survives with complete tracery and part of the roodbeam, with decoration at the upper level dated 1750. At the base is a pair of early 17th-century gates with balusters and strapwork at the head. Two sets of 15th-century poppyhead benches in the nave, much restored, have panelled and buttressed ends with animal figures on the buttresses, and brattishing and quatrefoils on the backs. The chancel contains one fine 15th-century stall with a matching buttressed book rest but without its misericord, surviving from a series. A further four good bench ends are attached to 19th-century choir stalls. An octagonal pulpit on a marble pillar dates to 1883 and is by George Gilbert Scott. Fragments of medieval glass remain in several chancel windows.