A simple cache placed just outside the grounds of this idyllic village church.
You enter through the south porch. This is a small church, and not terribly light inside, but one thing that might strike you is that there is a considerable amount of surviving wall paint. The familiar 14th century red ochre is on door arches in the nave, and there is more up in the chancel, particularly on a tomb recess. We know that all our churches were richly decorated inside, but somewhere like this you can see what that might have meant; not just devotional pictures, but simple decoration as well.
There is just one small surviving fragment of wall painting, but it is of outstanding interest. It is in the north-east corner of the nave, and shows what appears to be a king with a scythe, and some children in front of him. The subject appears to be Suffolk’s only surviving representation of St Walstan. Walstan was an East Anglian Saint who came to be associated with ploughmen, and as such his cult was political as well as devotional. The heart of the Walstan cult was just to the west of Norwich at Bawburgh and Tasburgh, but it was almost entirely effaced and forgotten in the years after the Reformation.
Another intriguing medieval survival is the glass in the south-west window of the chancel. At first sight it appears plain; but look closely in the yellow border, which Mortlock tells us is 13th century. At the very top there is an inscription in Norman French asking for prayers for Adam the Vicar. In contrast, the window in the south east corner of the nave is a lush 1920s war memorial depicting St George. HeThe drawing of his face is not good, giving it a peculiarly cartoon-like feel.
The more you look around this church, the more surviving medieval evidence there is. The screen is a good one, although it has been scoured of its catholic imagery. The traces of repainting may be early 17th century, for it was at this time the curious embellishments above the entrance were made. Another medieval survivor is the grand columnedpiscina up in the sanctuary; recut certainly, but not the surviving head of one of the sedilia arches.
There is a post-Reformation brass inscription in the middle of the nave floor to John Symunt, a model of protestant simplicity. At the west end of the church the font looks like a melted cheese; it is hard to tell if it is in its original configuration, or, indeed, if it was actually a font at all. A big clue that it was is that it has been heavily plastered over, as many fonts were in the later 16th century. There is a 17th century coffin plate on a window sill at the back of the church, but it is in very bad condition and was probably dug up in the graveyard. More recently, the WWI memorial is a 1920s stained glass window by Jones & Willis depicting St George, but it really isn't very good, I'm afraid.
Perhaps the strangest survival here is the extensive graffiti on the eastern faces of the chancel arch. Some of it is dated to the 1640s and 1650s, which is during the Commonwealth. At this time, the Church of England was supressed, and replaced with a presbyterian system of church government. Some churches hosted congregational worship, but others were put to different uses. Perhaps this graffiti survives from a time when the chancel was in use as a school, or even a stable
Simon Knott, October 2003
LOG ONLY, please bring pen and tweezers. FTF will receive the code to discover my FTF micro-coin
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