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1. All Saints, Ashbocking, Suffolk, England

Parish church
The centre of the present village of Ashbocking lies along the B1077 Ipswich to Debenham road, immediately to the N of its crossroads with the B1078 Wickham Market to Needham Market road and the some 6.5 miles N of the centre of Ipswich. The B1078 follows the line of a Roman road here. An older centre, consisting of the church with Ashbocking Hall alongside it and a few dwellings lies a mile to the W. The landscape here is the typical arable farmland of the East Anglian plain, its flatness tempered by the valley of a stream that runs westwards just S of the church to join the river Gipping near Needham Market.
2. St Mary, Ashby, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Ashby is in Lothingland, the Nernmost hundred of Suffolk. It is a tongue of land enclosed by the Waveney, which turns N after leaving Beccles so that it may reach the sea at Yarmouth rather than Lowestoft. The land here is low-lying and arable, and its villages have usually managed to resist encroachments by their giant neighbours to the N and S. Ashby church now stands alone in farmland, 0.4 mile S of a small, dispersed cluster of houses that is all there is of Ashby village. The medieval village was in the land immediately to the N of the church, and was deserted byc.1600. N of the present village is Ashby Warren and the Fritton Decoy - a lake fitted with nets for catching wild duck. Both the warren and the decoy appear to date from the 16thc.
3. St John the Baptist, Badingham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Badingham is a village in E Suffolk, 3 miles N of Framlingham and 6 miles NW of Saxmundham. A stream runs from N to S through the village, joining the river Alde at the southern end of the High Street, and the lie of the land is determined by these two valleys. Immediately to the S is a Roman road, now the A1120. The church is towards the northern end on the village and stands on steeply rising land on the E bank of the stream. The ground rises from W to E here, and has not been terraced for the building of the church, so that the nave slopes markedly up towards the E, and the chancel is reached by three steps. The church consists of a nave with S porch, a chancel with a modern S vestry and a W tower. The lower storey of the flint and septaria tower is 12thc., with long and short quoins, no buttresses, simple lancets to the S and W and a tower arch with roll-moulded jambs but a remodelled, pointed arch. The upper storey has Y-tracery bell-openings ofc.1300 and an embattled parapet. The nave has the remains of 12thc. shafting at the western angles, but there are no bases or capitals and the shafts are not recorded here. It thus belongs to the 12thc., but has been considerably altered. The walls are of flint in their lower parts but have been raised considerably with brick. The N doorway is blocked and the S, ofc.1300, is protected by a knapped flint porch of 1486, lavishly decorated with flushwork and provided with a battlemented parapet and a niche for a statue. The nave windows include a 13thc. lancet on the N side and another on the S, along with 15thc. windows at the normal height. When the walls were raised, windows were added to light the rood at the E. These were bequeathed by Edward Rous in 1506. A high window was installed at the W end of the N wall in the 18thc., to light a choir gallery (now gone). The chancel is of knapped flint with 14thc. flowing lateral windows and a 15thc. E window. A priest's doorway is set in the S wall, and on the N side are two large tombs; one of a member of the Carbonell family, perhaps Sir John (d.1423), and the other of William Cotton (d.1616) and his wife Lucie (d.1621). The chancel was rebuilt by E. L.Blackburne (1879-80), and at the same time new roofs were added and the church was re-seated. Repairs were carried out under the supervision of J. R. Sullivan in 1976-77. In addition to the remains of Romanesque fabric described above the church also houses two carved voussoirs set in the porch and a loose scallop capital and chevron voussoir.
4. Holy Trinity, Barsham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Holy Trinity looks conventional from the S, bizarre from the E and a complete mess from the N. It has a thatched nave of flint with one 12thc. window in the N wall, with a head reportedly of Caen stone. The S nave doorway has a flint porch, the N is unprotected. A two-bay N aisle was added as a chapel to St Catherine by F.C. Eden in 1908; Perpendicular in style but low and without a clerestorey. It does not extend to the W end, terminating E of the N doorway. On the exterior it is of rendered flint with a low, almost flat, lead roof. The W tower is round and has three phases. The lowest level is of flint with slightly pointed lancets to the cardinal directions. The E lancet is inside the church; the W has moulded decoration. Below it is an inserted Perpendicular W window. The next stage is of flint with signs of large blocked windows visible in the stonework. The top stage, probably 16thc., employs decorative bands of brick on the flint and has Perpendicular bell openings. The chamfered parapet is of brick.
5. St Peter, Baylham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Baylham stands in wooded arable land among rolling hills midway between Ipswich and Stowmarket. The church stands in the centre of the village and Baylham Hall is 0.7 miles away to the W. St Peter's is a flint church of nave, chancel with N and S transepts and W tower. The N nave doorway indicates the 12thc. origin of the fabric, but new windows were installed on the S in the 14thc. and on the N in the 15thc. All were restored in the 19thc., and the S doorway and its porch are 19thc. too. The chancel was rebuilt by Frederick Barnes in 1870, including the chancel arch, and both transepts were added at that date. The N transept houses the organ and a vestry, and the S is fitted with pews but no altar. The tower is unbuttressed and of knapped flint; perhaps 13thc. in origin but remodelled and heightened in the 14thc. It has small lancets high in the lower storey and a 14thc. W window and bell-openings. The parapet is battlemented. The blocked N doorway is the only Romanesque feature.
6. St Nicholas, Bedfield, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Bedfield is a sprawling village of some 300 inhabitants in the flat arable farmland of the East Anglian plain. It is remote from major centres, being 14 miles N of Ipswich and 10 miles SE of Diss. The church is more or less in the geographical centre of the village, but is surrounded by farmland and neighboured by the farm itself. The hall site is 91 metres (100 yards) to the N. St Nicholas's church comprises a nave with a S porch, chancel and W tower. The flint nave has a 12thc. N doorway, which, with the layered masonry, indicates its date of construction. The nave windows are all 15th-16thc. now. The S doorway and its porch are 13thc., as are the chancel arch and the niches to either side of it. There is a SE rood stair with a 13thc. pointed arch. Some of the chancel masonry appears 12thc., but the chancel arch, piscina and N window are 13thc., indicating a major remodelling. The S windows are 15th-16thc., while the E window dates from 1872. The knapped flint W tower is 15thc., with a W doorway with flowers in the arch and niches above, diagonal W buttresses and an embattled parapet. There is flushwork decoration on the plinth, buttresses and parapet. The only Romanesque sculpture surviving is on the N doorway, now partly obscured by a shrubbery.
7. St Mary, Benhall, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Benhall is in central E Suffolk, 1½ miles SW of Saxmundham in rolling arable land on the E side of the Alde valley. St Mary's is a flint and septaria church with a nave with a S porch and a large transeptal N chapel, a chancel with a separately roofed N chapel that communicates with the transept, and a W tower. The nave has a chevron-decorated 12thc. S doorway under a 15thc. porch of flint and knapped flint. The nave windows are 15thc. and there is a wooden W gallery that partly conceals the tall, pointed tower arch. The transept and N chapel were built in the 19thc. to house a vestry and schoolroom. The organ now occupies the N transept, and the entrance arch from the chancel to the N chapel has been blocked. The chapel, and the space in the transept behind the organ are now given over to vestry uses, and are accessed through a doorway at the E end of the N chancel wall. The chancel windows are in a 15thc.style, as are the N windows of the 19thc. transept and chapel. On the S side of the chancel, the priest's doorway is protected by a little gabled porch, also 19thc. The nave, chancel, transept and chapel all have diagonal buttresses with flushwork panels. The two-storey W tower is unbuttressed and has long and short quoins at the SE, NW and NE angles and a shallow buttress-like projection on the S wall marking the bell stair. This also has long and short quoins, and the lower part of the tower thus probably dates from the later 11thc., although Mortlock suspected that it was substantially a 19thc. rebuild. At the SW angle the long quoins have been replaced in brick, and there is a later inserted W doorway. The upper storey has 15thc. bell-openings, and the inserted W window is also Perpendicular. The battlemented parapet has flushwork decoration. The only Romanesque sculpture is on the elaborate S doorway.
8. St Mary, Bentley, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Bentley is a large village in S central Suffolk, 5½ miles SW of Ipswich and only a mile from the A12 and Capel St Mary, the nearest town. The village itself has a good deal of newer housing, but the church, the hall and Bentley Park are a mile to the N. The country here is arable farmland, with plantation around the park and older woodland nearby. St Mary’s is a flint church comprising a nave with S porch, chancel and W tower. The nave was given a N aisle with its own double pitched roof and a three-bay arcade by Benjamin Ferrey of London in 1858, and this extends E as a pseudo-chapel (actually an organ room and vestry) with an arch to the chancel. Ferrey’s work included a major restoration of the nave, and the chancel was reconstructed during the incumbency of Canon Beauchamp (1879-99), but some older fabric remains. The nave has a 19thc. S doorway that includes two 12thc. chevron voussoirs in its inner order, and the chancel has a N window, refaced outside but retaining its deep splay within. There is a loose chevron voussoir in the vestry. The tower is 15thc. with diagonal W buttresses, a polygonal S stair and an embattled parapet with flushwork decoration.
9. All Saints, Beyton, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Beyton lies less than five miles E of the centre of Bury St Edmunds, just S of the A14. The village lies in arable farmland, and the church is 0.4 miles W of the hall site. All Saints has a round (actually oval) W tower, a nave with a N aisle added and a chancel. A parish room and vestry annexe was added on the S side of the chancel in 1973. Construction is of flint throughout. The tower has a plinth course and big radial buttresses have been added at the NW and SW. The lower W window is 15thc. as is the tower arch, and the plain parapet is an addition of 1780, with brick bell-openings. There are signs of render on the tower but not the parapet or the buttresses. The windows on the S side of the nave are 15thc., and there is a 14thc. S doorway under a 15thc. porch. The three-bay N aisle was added in the 1853-54, and a 12thc. doorway re-set in its outer wall. This has no porch and is now partly obscured by a shrub. The chancel arch is 19thc. too, and while the western part of the chancel is 14thc. it was extended eastwards in 1884-85, with an E window by Sir Arthur Blomfield. The 19thc. aisle and chancel extension both have windows in a 15thc. Perpendicular style. The 1853-54 rebuild was by John Johnson of Bury St Edmunds. There was an earlier restoration by Howe, Mortimer and Azelwood in 1834-35 when a gallery was added at the W end of the nave. The only Romanesque feature is the re-set N doorway.
10. St Mary, Blundeston, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Blundeston is in Lothingland, the northernmost hundred of Suffolk. It is a tongue of land enclosed by the Waveney which turns N after leaving Beccles so that it may reach the sea at Yarmouth rather than Lowestoft. The land here is low-lying and arable, and its villages have usually managed to resist encroachments by their giant neighbours to the N and S. Blundeston could be considered a suburb of Lowestoft, but it has not been overrun as Oulton was. It is a good-sized village of some 300 inhabitants, most of whom commute to Yarmouth or Lowestoft. Blundeston prison, at the southern edge of the village, dates from 1963. The church and hall are half a mile apart on either side of the village centre.
11. St Michael, Boulge, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Boulge is in the E of the county, 2½ miles NW of the centre of Woodbridge. The landscape is the usual arable farmland of the E Anglian plain; not entirely flat and drained by the network of streams running into the Deben estuary at Martlesham Creek, S of Woodbridge. The name is said to derive from the French 'bouge', meaning an uncultivated heathland, although the Domesday survey give a picture of many small parcels of ploughland. The parish covers approximately a square mile in a two-mile long strip running NE to SW, but it is sparsely populated and there is no village. The community now consists of just 13 dwellings in all; just a couple of farms and a few scattered cottages. The church stands to the N of a small wood in the former parkland surrounding the site of Boulge Hall, demolished in 1956. The normal access to the church is from the S, and from this aspect it appears almost entirely Victorian. St Michael's has a W tower, a nave with a S aisle and a chancel with a large S vestry. Nave and chancel are of flint, of equal width and roofed in one. There is no chancel arch. A plain blocked N lancet in the chancel indicates a date in the early 13thc., but for the rest, the N windows of nave and chancel are ofc.1300 (Y-tracery),c.1320 (reticulated) or 15thc., the N nave doorway is 14thc., and the E wall of the chancel dates from 1858. On the south, the nave aisle is of three bays; the two at the E with a normal pentise roof, and the west bay taller and with its own gabled roof, built as a Fitzgerald family chapel. Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, is buried in the churchyard. The chancel also has a transeptal vestry and organ chamber. This work on the S of the church was carried out in three campaigns, in 1858 (by W. G. and E. H. Habershon), in 1867 (by W. G. Habershon and A. Pite), and in 1895 (by S. Gambier Parry of Wminster). In each case the patron was the owner of the Hall; J. P. Fitzgerald for the two earlier works and Mr and Mrs Holmes White for the latest campaign. In each case too, knapped flint facings were used. The Tudor tower is of brick with an embattled parapet and a pointed segmental headed tower arch. Maintenance work to the fabric was carried out in 1978-81 by A. W. Anderson of Norwich (roofs), in 1981 (N wall) and in 1983-84 (tower). Boulge has no Romanesque fabric, but is significant in housing a font said to be an export from Tournai.
12. All Saints, Bradfield Combust, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Bradfield Combust straddles the A134, Bury St Edmunds to Sudbury road, some 5 miles S of Bury. This was a Roman road, but is now an important thoroughfare that divides the church, Church Farm and the Manger public house, on the W side, from the hall and its park on the E. The village takes its name from the burning of the hall, one of the Abbot of St Edmundsbury’s residences, by disaffected tenants in 1327. The present hall is a 19thc. building, surrounded by a park planted by the Rev. Arthur Young (d.1759), father of the celebrated agriculturalist and political economist of the same name. The surrounding country is the typical rolling farmland of this part of W Suffolk.
13. New St Mary, Braiseworth, Suffolk, England

Private house, formerly parish church
Braiseworth is in rolling arable farmland in N central Suffolk, 1½ miles S of Eye. It lies to the E of the Roman road from Ipswich to Diss, now the A140, but there is now no village centre, only the old and new churches (both now redundant), an orchard, Priory farm and a few widely dispersed houses on the lanes round about. Taking Priory farm as the centre, the land falls to the E to the valley of the river Dove, a stream that flows NE to join the river Waveney near Hoxne on the Norfolk border.
14. Old St Mary, Braiseworth, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Braiseworth is in rolling arable farmland in N central Suffolk, 1½ miles S of Eye. It lies to the E of the Roman road from Ipswich to Diss, now the A140, but there is now no village centre, only the old and new churches (both now redundant), an orchard, Priory farm and a few widely dispersed houses on the lanes round about. Taking Priory farm as the centre, the land falls to the E to the valley of the river Dove, a stream that flows NE to join the river Waveney near Hoxne on the Norfolk border. The medieval church of St Mary, Braiseworth was partly demolished in 1857 for the building of a new church by E. B. Lamb half a mile to the NW, alongside the road. Lamb used the nave used doorways of the old church in the building of the new one (see Braiseworth, New St Mary). The remains of the old church stand in Priory farm now, close to the farmhouse and other buildings. The old graveyard remained in use long after 1857, but now serves as grazing land for sheep. All that remains of the church is the chancel; the nave has been demolished and the W end closed off with a brick wall with a large doorway for entry and brick and flint buttresses for stability. The chancel is of flint with mortar render and is diagonally buttressed at the E end. There is a plain 12thc. lancet and a small 14thc. lancet with an ogee head in the N wall, and a 15thc. two-light window and a 13thc. priest’s doorway in the S. At the E is a two-light Y-tracery window ofc.1300. When Cautley visited before 1937 some of the fittings were still in-situ. The church stands on private farmland and is not accessible without permission. The author and the CRSBI would like to thank the owner for allowing access to the site. There is no Romanesque sculpture here now.
15. St Edmund, Bromeswell, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Bromeswell is a village in SE Suffolk. The nearest town is Woodbridge, two miles to the W on the other side of the river Deben, which could be forded near the present Wilford bridge. Bromeswell lies on relatively high and fertile ground surrounded by low-lying heathland (to the S) and marshland (to the W). The early Anglo-Saxon site of Sutton Hoo is a mile to the SW, alongside the Deben.
16. St Peter, Bruisyard, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Bruisyard is in E Suffolk, 4 miles NW of Saxmundham and 3 miles NE of Framlington. The village is on rising ground overlooking the river Alde; mostly pasture around the village but with Bruisyard Wood, an ancient forest replanted with softwood in the 1960s, to the NE. The church is in the centre of the village and the hall is at its Eern end. This was originally Roke Hall and was converted for used as a Priory of Poor Clares in 1366. Further details of its history will be found in VII History below. St Peter's church consists of a nave with a S porch, a chancel with a large S chapel and a round W tower, all of flint. The nave is 12thc., and the original N doorway survives, now blocked. The S doorway is mid-13thc. and has a post-medieval brick and timber rendered porch. The nave windows are all replacements, dating from the 15thc and perhaps the 18thc. The chancel arch is 13thc.-14thc., and the chancel has the remains of a 14thc. piscina. The S chapel was added as a funerary chapel for the Hare family in the reign of Elizabeth I. It was later used as a vestry and its conversion for use as a parish room began in 2004. The W tower is said to be Anglo-Saxon (church guide), although Pevsner labels it Norman. The exterior shows a single storey, although the lower part is clearly a different build from the upper. In the lower part, some courses are laid in herringbone fashion, and at the top of this section the walls bulge out and have been repaired with red brick. Above the bulge, the tower ascends more regularly and no herringbone is visible in the coursing. The top is flat, without a parapet. There is a large, pointed lancet inserted at the W, and the bell-openings are 15thc.
17. St Lawrence, Brundish, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Brundish is towards the N of E Suffolk, in a hilly arable region of dispersed settlements. It is 4 miles N of Framlingham and 9 miles SW of Halesworth. The old centre was clustered around the church and Brundish Hall immediately to the NE, with a second nucleus at Brundish Street, a mile to the NW, centred on Brundish House. Brundish Hall was demolished in the 1920s, and reputedly shipped to the USA to be rebuilt there, so the church stands alone in its graveyard, and Brundish Street now represents the centre of the village. St Lawrence's has a 12thc. W tower of flint with ashlar quoins. It retains traces of round-headed windows, now blocked; one at a low level and a pair at a higher level on its N, S and W faces. On the E face, the more elaborate 12thc. double bell-opening remains higher still, but the other three faces have 15thc. bell-openings at the same level. There is an embattled parapet, also of flint. The tower arch is small, plain and partly blocked with a doorway set in it. The tall nave and chancel are of flint and entirely 15thc. There is a S porch decorated with flushwork and repaired with red brick, and the nave and chancel buttresses also have flushwork decoration. The church is famous for its brasses; a 14thc. brass of Sir Edmund de Burnedissh, a priest, and 16thc. ones to the Colby family. Several of the Brundish brasses were stolen in the 19thc. and that of Sir Francis Colby (c.1570) has since been rediscovered in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Attempts by the Parish Council to repatriate it have so far been unsuccessful, although the museum has supplied a replica to hang in the church (The Guardian). The church also contains 18thc. box-pews encasing medieval benches, and carved bench-ends. The chancel was restored in the 19thc., and repairs to the church were carried out by C. B. Smith of Woodbridge in 1962-63. Romanesque features recorded here are the tower arch and the east bell-opening.
18. All Saints, Chevington, Suffolk, England

Parish church
All Saints' has an aisleless 12thc. nave with one original lancet on the N side and original N and S doorways, the S under a 14thc. wooden porch, heavily restored. The chancel is 13thc., and there is a Perpendicular W tower with diagonal buttresses and flushwork on the plinth. An extra storey has been added above the bell-storey, open to the sky and with battlements and tall crocketed finials on the corner merlons, and this dates from the restoration of the Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry,c.1800. Construction is of flint with a brick battlement on the nave. A major restoration took place in 1910, and the chancel was reordered in 1984; the floor had been lowered at the end of the 17thc., and now a horseshoe-shaped brick dais was built up as a communion platform. The only Romanesque sculpture is on the S doorway of c.1200, but the plain N doorway is described here too.
19. St Michael, Cookley, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Cookley is in East Suffolk, towards the N, some 2½ miles SW of Halesworth, in the arable boulder-clay plateau typical of High Suffolk. The village comprises just the church, a few cottages and a farm along a by-road that follows the course of a stream that flows eastwards to join the river Blyth at Halesworth. The church and houses are on the rising ground to the N of the stream, while to the S is the woodland of Broomgreen Covert.
20. St Mary, Creeting St Mary, Suffolk, England

Benedictine priory
The Creetings are a pair of villages standing in rolling land of mixed cultivation two to three miles E of Stowmarket. There were once four churches; St Mary's, St Olave's, St Peter's and All Saints'. The first two were originally small but discrete alien Benedictine priories, but St Olave's (originally a cell of Grestein) had gone by the 17thc. (although its site has been excavated recently). All Saints' parish church was alongside St Mary's, but was blown down by a storm in 1801 and its parishioners accommodated by the addition of a N transept to St Mary's, using some of the old fabric. St Mary's is a flint church of nave, chancel and W tower. The N transept added in 1802 was enlarged to form a three-bay N aisle in 1885. There is a N doorway without a porch and a 12thc. S doorway under a 15thc. porch liberally adorned with flushwork. The chancel is the same width as the nave, with which it shares a roof, and has no chancel arch. It was 13thc. originally but was largely rebuilt in 1885. To the N is an organ room and vestry. The W tower is 14thc. in its lower stage, with a flowing W window and the arms of the Uffords, Earls of Suffolk, above it. It originally had a spire but this had collapsed by 1801 and was replaced with a pyramid roof. The present bell stage and parapet, embattled and decorated with flushwork, date from 1885.and brick diagonal buttresses have been added at the W. To the N of the church stands a single-storey parish room dating from the early 19thc. and once used as a school. The S nave doorway, heavily restored, is the only Romanesque feature.
21. St Peter, Creeting St Peter, Suffolk, England

Parish church
The Creetings are a pair of villages standing in rolling land of mixed cultivation 2to 3 miles E of Stowmarket. There were once four churches; St Mary’s, St Olave’s, St Peter’s and All Saints’. The first two were small but discrete alien Benedictine priories, but St Olave’s had gone by the 17thc (although its site has been excavated recently). All Saints’ parish church was alongside St Mary’s, but was blown down by a storm in 1801 (see Creeting St Mary). The A14 trunk road slices through Creeting St Peter, with the village to the N and the church isolated to the S of the road. Although the church is only 500 yards from the centre of the village as the crow flies, it is a mile away by road. St Peter’s has a nave, chancel and W tower, all of flint, with the S nave wall mortar rendered. The nave has a plain 12thc N doorway and a 13thc. S doorway under a 14thc. flint porch. The nave windows are 14thc.-15thc., and inside is a wooden W gallery housing the organ. The chancel arch is broad and 14thc., as are the chancel windows. On the N side is a vestry, rebuilt c.2000 reusing a 14thc. window. The W tower is 14thc. too, with flowing bell-openings, diagonal western buttresses and a battlemented parapet. There is no tower arch inside the church, only a small doorway and the arch may have been blocked when the gallery was erected in the 19thc. On buttresses of the tower, porch and nave there are flushwork crosses; five surviving but Simon Knott (www.suffolkchurches.co.uk) detects signs of repairs on seven other buttresses and suggests that there were once twelve. They might have been consecration crosses, corresponding to a reconsecration after the major rebuilding of the 14thc. The church was derelict and roofless in the 18thc., and its present appearance owes much to its 19thc. restoration.
22. All Saints, Darsham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Darsham is a village in E Suffolk, 5 miles N of Saxmundham and 3 miles inland from Dunwich. It stands in rising arable land in the valley of one of the small tributaries that drain into the Minsmere river and eventually reach the sea via a sluice S of Dunwich. All Saints is a flint church comprising a nave with a S porch, a chancel and a W tower. The S walls of the nave and chancel are rendered. The nave has 12thc. lateral doorways; the N blocked with brick and the S protected by a knapped flint porch of 1887. To the E of the N doorway traces of a blocked window remain – possibly round-headed. The external angles have large quoins of rough ashlar, pointing to an early 12thc. date. The masonry of the N wall indicates that the nave was heightened, probably in the late-15thc. when the windows were added. Inside, the remains of a rood stair survive at the SE of the nave. The windows were replaced in the 15thc. The chancel is long with a pointed lancet towards the E on the N side. The E wall was rebuilt in the 19thc. with a plain pointed triplet in the Early English style. Other chancel windows date from the 14thc. to the 16thc. The tower is tall and slender and dates from the 15thc. Bequests for its construction were made between 1460 and 1505. It is of flint and septaria with diagonal buttresses and a battlemented parapet, both with flushwork decoration. The W window and bell-openings have 15thc. tracery. It was repaired in 1989-91. The two nave doorways are described below.
23. St Mary Magdalene, Debenham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Debenham is a small town skirted by the river Deben (little more than a stream at this point), in central Suffolk some 8 miles E of Stowmarket. It is built on a hill, small but steep-sided, with the church at the summit and the High Street running past it from N to S. The church provides a perfect example of the development of English medieval architecture. Its sturdy W tower is 11thc.; its chancel is 13thc. Early English; the nave is 15thc. Perpendicular and the W Galilee is 14thc. Decorated. In more detail, the lower parts of the flint tower probably date from the first half of the 11thc., before the Conquest, and show long and short work at the angles (best seen at the NW) and coursed and herringbone masonry. On the S wall are two simple round-headed lancets, but they are not identical. The lower is thinner with long and short masonry jambs and belongs with the first phase described above. The upper is broader with a slight chamfer around the opening, pointing to a post-Conquest date. The tower arch inside belongs to this second campaign. The tower received its belfry stage, including the bell-openings, around 1380, the date of a bequest of 20 marks from Walter Hart. The ashlar embattled parapet is a later addition. It apparently had a small spire that was struck by lightning in the 17thc. and taken down in 1667. There is no obvious trace of the Romanesque nave and chancel that belonged to the tower. The next phase of the present building is the 13thc. chancel that replaced its Romanesque predecessor. The N windows are plain pointed lancets but those on the S, facing the town, are two-light plate tracery windows, indicating a date towards the middle of the 13thc. The E window is renewed, but is a simple triplet as might be expected. Inside, the piscina is also 13thc. On the S side stands the impressive tomb of Sir Charles Framlingham (d.1595) and his wife. The next campaign involved the building of the Galilee, a two-storey W porch of flint with a knapped flint façade and battlements on the lateral walls. It dates from the late 14thc. The Norman nave was completely remodelled in the first half of the 15thc., when aisles were added with tall, four-bay arcades. The chancel arch was replaced at the same time as the arcades were built. Mortlock points out that the 13thc. jambs of the arch were raised by inserting new sections, and new capitals were carved, like those of the nave arcades. The arch became unstable, and by 1875 it was propped up by a timber support, and the chancel was blocked off as unsafe (Watling). It was restored in 1883. The nave aisles are tall too, and lit by three-light windows with segmental two-centred heads. The walls of the central vessel were raised to provide clerestories with two triple-light windows per bay. The Perpendicular work was faced externally with knapped flint, and embattled parapets were provided for nave and aisle walls. The N and S doorways are positioned below half-height windows in the aisles, and have no porches. The original nave buttresses have flushwork panels, but two have been replaced in the centre of the S wall, along with the section of aisle wall between them. This work is done in red brick, and probably dates from 1567-68 when money was bequeathed to repair the broken and decayed windows. The S aisle windows lost their tracery and mullions during the 18thc, and were patched with brick and timber, and in the same period the SE corner of the church was consolidated with huge brick buttresses. These disfigurements were reversed in the restorations of 1882-87 by H. J.Green of Norwich, who also restored the chancel. The tracery of the new S aisle windows was copied from those in the N aisle. Only the tower arch is recorded here.
24. St Mary, Depden, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Mary’s stands at the Sern end of a strip of woodland that was once much larger. It is not served by any road, and must be reached by a walk of a good half-mile, skirting arable land and passing through the wood. The nearest building is Depden Hall (now a bed and breakfast), which is some 400 yards away and includes fabric reputed to date from the 14thc. The village itself has fragmented into settlements at Depden Green to the N and along the A143 to the E of church and hall. St Mary’s is a light and airy flint-faced church of nave, chancel and W tower. The aisleless nave has a 12thc. S doorway protected by a modern flint and brick porch that has been fitted with a skylight and a tiled floor, and converted for use as a kitchen and storeroom. The N doorway is later, and has a modern concrete and timber porch. The nave walls have Y-tracery windows ofc.1300, mostly restoration but with some original tracery. The S wall appears to have been refaced recently. The chancel has a late-13thc. piscina, and windows of a similar stylistic date (although they are largely 19thc. work). At the E end, diagonal buttresses with flushwork and capped by little stumpy pinnacles have been added. The tower and its arch can be dated to the mid-15thc. by a bequest of 1451. The tower has diagonal buttresses, flushwork on the plinth, a stair turret at the SE angle, and an embattled parapet. The chancel and nave were described as 'already restored' in 1837 (Church Plans Online). A fire in the 1980s gutted the nave, and the roof was replaced with the present arch-braced construction. The architects were Whitworth and Hall of Bury St Edmunds.
25. St James's Hospital Chapel, Dunwich, Suffolk, England

Formerly hospital chapel
Dunwich is on the E coast of Suffolk between Swold and Aldeburgh. It was a Roman site and an important Anglo-Saxon port town, and from the late 11thc. until the middle of the 14thc. it was a nationally important seaport. By 1225 it was a mile from N to S, with an area similar to London's at that date, and had seven parishes with 19 churches and chapels, Franciscan and Dominican houses and two hospitals, including this one. By 1242 Dunwich was the largest port in Suffolk, but this changed dramatically after the great storms of 1287 and especially 1328. The latter completely silted up the harbour mouth and flooded the quays, effectively ruining the town as a port, although some fishing survived. The church of St Leonard disappeared into the sea and only 12 houses in that parish were left standing. The parishes of St Martin and St Nicholas lost 225 out of 300 houses between them. Many of the inhabitants left in search of a livelihood elsewhere and this, in combination with another great storm in 1347, when another 400 houses were lost to the sea, further reduced the size of the town. In another storm twenty years later, the churches of St Martin and St Nicholas were lost. The sea continued to erode the coastline, reaching the market place in 1540. The inhabitants stripped the churches and other buildings of their lead roofs and valuables as the sea reached them, and by 1717 St John's, the church of the Knights Templar, the market cross, St Peter's, the Blackfriars monastery and the town gaol were all lost in this way. The last of the medieval churches to go was All Saints. The parish boundaries had been redrawn to bring what remained of Dunwich into its parish, but there were not enough parishioners left to support it, and its last rector left in 1755. It remained in occasional use until the new church of St James was built alongside the Hospital in 1832, after which it was abandoned. It went into the sea between 1904 and 1919, and its last buttress was moved into St James's churchyard before the sea could claim it.
26. St Peter, Elmsett, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Elmsett is a large agricultural village 7 miles W of the centre of Ipswich. The country here is rolling and arable, with much sugar beet grown. The village suffered casualties in 1941 when a bomb (possibly intended for Wattisham airfield, 3 miles to the NW) destroyed a row of cottages, and there has been some new building to replace them. The church is outside the village centre to the NE, and stands on ground that slopes steeply down to a tributary of the Belstead Brook to the N. The site has been partially levelled by building a steep embankment N of the churchyard and cutting into the slope on the S, for the foundations. Hence the floor inside the nave is much lower than the ground to the S, where the entrance is.
27. All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Eyke is a village in SE Suffolk, 10 miles NE of Ipswich and 3 miles NE of Woodbridge. The river Deben flows past the NW edge of the village; the ground sloping down from the village into the valley. To the SE of the village is Rendlesham forest. Eyke is a good-sized village clustered around the A1152 road out of Woodbridge, with the church sited alongside the main road in the centre of the village.
28. All Saints, Fornham All Saints, Suffolk, England

Parish church
The river Lark cuts through the Fornhams (All Saints on the W side of the valley and St Martin and St Genevieve on the east) after passing through Bury St Edmunds on its way to join the Great Ouse near Ely. Fornham All Saints is only half a mile from the northern outskirts of Bury, but retains its village character. All Saints church has a nave with S aisle and S porch, a chancel, N chapel and W tower. The earliest work is the 12thc. S doorway, heavily restored. The nave, however, was rebuiltc.1300 (one Y-tracery S window), and the porch was added in the 15thc. The S aisle was then added, abutting the E wall of the porch, but extending alongside the chancel to form a S chapel. The chancel itself is 14thc., with a three-light reticulated E window and flowing tracery windows on the N side. Its piscine is curiously placed to the W of the sedilia. On the N a chapel was added in the 15thc. with a squint to the main altar. The tower is 13thc. in its lower parts, with simple lancets. The bell-storey is ofc.1300 and there is a battlemented parapet with gargoyles and pinnacles. The restoration was by Sir Arthur Blomfield, in the 1860s, and he replaced the aisle and chancel roofs, renewed most of the windows to their original designs, restored the porch and added the tower pinnacles. Romanesque sculpture is found on the restored S doorway.
29. St Edmund, Fritton, Norfolk, England

Parish church
St Edmunds is a complete 12thc. church of nave, round W tower and chancel with an apsidal E end. The 12thc. nave was originally much narrower, and was widened in the 14thc. by moving the S wall nine feet S. The result is that both the tower and the chancel are set at the N end of their respective nave walls. The effect is most disconcerting looking down the nave from W to E. The chancel has a barrel-vaulted straight bay and an apse with three windows, deeply splayed and decorated with a chevron order within, but small and plain without. The windows of the straight bay are insertions, perhaps of the 14thc. The arch to the chancel is pointed and of four orders that die into the walls without supports. It presumably belongs to the 14thc. remodelling. The apse arch is 12thc. and described below. The exterior of the chancel is of flint with some brickwork repairs at the top and flat pilaster buttresses. The nave is also of flint, although its tall E wall has been rebuilt in brick. It has a S doorway with a porch of knapped flints, and the N doorway now gives access from inside the church to a 19thc. vestry. Both nave and chancel have thatched roofs. There is no tower arch inside the church; simply a small pointed doorway. The lower section of the tower is of flint with some large blocks of ashlar, bricks and tiles included. The upper part is of knapped flints with a parapet of brick. There are 13thc. lancets in the lower storey, wider pointed windows of brick at the foot of the upper storey and Perpendicular bell-openings. There was a restoration in 1854-56 by J. Brown and B. Jackson.
30. St Mary, Great Bradley, Suffolk, England

Parish church
The villages of Great and Little Bradley are in the Stour valley N of Haverhill; their churches less than a mile apart. St Mary’s has a nave with N and S doorways and a S porch, a chancel and a W tower. The nave is Romanesque; both doorways are 12thc., as are the jambs of the chancel arch, but the arch itself is later and steeply pointed. The nave windows have all been replaced; one on the N is 16thc., the rest are 19thc. The S porch is an attractive brick construction with a crow-stepped gable and niches, dating from the 16thc.. The chancel, and the upper part of the chancel arch, are early 14thc. judging from the S chancel doorway and the form of the windows. The W tower is perhaps 14thc. too, and has angle buttresses and a spiral stair turret at its SE corner. It was heavily modified in the 16thc., however, and the W doorway, the flushwork on the plinth, the bell-openings and the battlements on the main parapet and the taller stair turret parapet must date from the later period. Externally the tower is mortar rendered, as is the entire church except for the S nave wall (of flint) and the E chancel wall (of flint with brick diagonal buttresses and decorative banding) and the S porch of red brick. Of the Romanesque work, the N doorway is plain in comparison with the S, which is modelled either on the Prior’s doorway at Ely, or on the copy at nearby Kirtling (Cambs).
31. St Mary, Gedding, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Gedding is midway between Bury and Stowmarket, well S of the A14, in farmland that is mostly arable with some woodland and pasture. The church stands at the eastern end of the village, and the hall (partly 16thc and now the home of Bill Wyman) is half a mile away to NE. St Mary’s is a flint church of nave and chancel with a low W tower whose upper part is of red brick with a tiled pyramid roof. The nave is 12thc; it has a tiny round-headed lancet just E of the lateral doorways to N and S. The S window has chevron decoration; the N is plain. The S nave doorway is a plain 13thc. piece without a porch; the N is ofc.1200 and very plain. Other nave windows are 14thc. The 13thc. chancel arch is narrow and has 14thc. ogee-headed openings to either side, decorated on their E faces only with seaweed foliage and ballflowers. The chancel windows are early 14thc. The tower arch is 15thc., tall and carried on corbels. The tower is also 15thc., of knapped flint with diagonal buttresses decorated with flushwork. It was dilapidated by the 1880s, and was rebuilt with red brick at the top, but the flushwork is original and includes a Marian monogram and the arms of the Chamberlins (according to Mortlock). The Romanesque features described here are the N nave doorway and the S nave window.
32. Holy Trinity, Gisleham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Gisleham stands on the edge of the arable land of the NE Suffolk coastal plain, less than a mile S of the edge of Lowestoft. The village was a small one, but the expansion of Lowestoft seems set to absorb it as it has already absorbed its neighbour, Carlton Colville.
33. St Mary, Gosbeck, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Gosbeck is a dispersed parish lying some 7 miles N of the centre of Ipswich. The landscape is typical of the East Anglian plain; more or less flat and given over to arable cultivation. The parish is crossed by two streams that converge in the S and eventually run into the river Gipping NW of Ipswich, and their valleys lend some variation to the landscape. To the W is Gosbeck wood, an ancient wood covering approximately 25 hectares. The church is 0.6 mile west of the village centre, with the wood to its W and Church Farm to the N. The hall is at the NE end of the village, but the presence of Newton Hall at the SW end and a moated site 0.3 mile NW of the church may reflect the existence of several manors here until the 1820s.
34. St Mary, Great Blakenham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Great Blakenham lies 2½ miles N of the edge of Ipswich; the village sprawling along the road from Needham Market. The main road is the A14 half a mile to the E, but traffic through Great Blakenham is quite heavy enough to rob it of any village character. This is a pity, because the site is potentially an attractive one, in rolling landscape alongside a crossing of the river Gipping. St Mary’s is on the main road in the centre of the village. It consists of a nave, chancel and W tower. The nave is 12thc. with plain round-headed lateral doorways and one 12thc. S lancet. The N doorway is blocked and the S has a timber porch. When the visit was made the porch floor was being lowered to allow wheelchair access. The chancel has a 13thc. triple lancet in the E wall, blocked in the 17thc. and uncovered and restored in the 1870s. There are also 13thc. lancets in the lateral walls at the E end. An organ room has been added on the N side and a vestry on the S. The chancel roof is lower than that of the nave, but there is no chancel arch. The two-storey W tower has no buttresses, a tall plinth course and battlements. The bell-openings and W window are 14thc. reticulated. The church is of flint, generally rendered with mortar, but on the nave walls only traces of render remain. The W tower is rendered only on its top storey.
35. St Mary and St Lawrence, Great Bricett, Suffolk, England

Formerly Augustinian priory, now parish church
Great Bricett is a village in central Suffolk, 5 miles S of Stowmarket and 9 miles NW of the centre of Ipswich. It stands in arable farmland on a minor road that runs from the village to the buildings of Wattisham airfield, immediately N of it. The priory church is in the centre of the village, to the W of the main street, with a moated site 300 yards further to the W. The church is a very long, low aisleless building under a single roof of modern tiles. It has no chancel arch, but the position of the division is marked by an external buttress and a change in masonry, as well as a slight northward change in orientation at the E end and N rood stair. Only the S side of the church is accessible; to the N lay the cloister surrounded by the usual priory offices but after the Dissolution a manor house was built directly onto the NW angle and this covers most of the complex. The nave had a 12thc. W tower, the blocked tower arch surviving inside with a blocked window above it, visible inside and out. The W façade is now plain and gabled, and is partly hidden by the 16thc. manor house built against it. On the W gable is a plain, rendered single bell-cote of 1907. The outline of a blocked, plain S doorway is visible to the E of the S porch. That must be the original doorway ofc.1110; the present S doorway is ofc.1160-70, under a modern flint and timber porch. The S nave windows are largely ofc.1300 with Y-tracery, although there are remade round-headed windows at either end, and the remains of a blocked window immediately E of the porch. The priory church had short transepts with E chapels at the W end of the chancel, and an apsidal E end (discovered by excavation, see Fairweather (1927)). The transepts were apparently removed in a remodelling ofc.1300, when chapels were added further E and a square-ended presbytery. Finally the chapels were removed, although their blocked arches remain, now housing small windows. The presbytery was removed and the present E wall with its five-light flowing tracery window was built in 1868. Pevsner suggests that this window is a copy of what was there before. Three restorations are known after that of 1868. In 1905-07 there were general repairs to the walls and roof by E. H. Sedding of Plymouth, in 1932-34 more general repairs were carried out under H. M. Cautley, and in 1950 the contractors Cubitt and Gotts cariied out unspecified repairs. In one or other of these campaigns the side walls of the chancel and the E end of the nave were repaired or raised with courses of red brick. The S doorway is an important Romanesque feature, not least because of its inscription naming the original dedication of the priory church, and the church also has an elaborately arcaded late-12thc. font. The author is grateful to John Higgitt for his advice about the inscription.
36. All Saints, Great Thurlow, Suffolk, England

Parish church
The villages of Great and Little Thurlow are in the Stour valley N of Haverhill; their churches only half a mile apart. All Saints, Great Thurlow is alongside the Hall. It has an aisled and clerestoried nave, a short chancel with a N vestry and a W tower. The 15thc. nave arcades are of four bays, carried on lozenge-shaped piers without capitals into which the arch mouldings die without any transition. The square-headed clerestory windows are Perpendicular too. The nave has north and south doorways, the north under a porch. The chancel is very short and 12thc in its fabric, with external shafts at its eastern angles, but it was heavily restored in the 19thc and given a new chancel arch, and it retains no original windows. The roofs of both nave and chancel have been raised, apparently for purely decorative purposes, since the tower shows the scar of a taller and steeper nave on its east face. Liturgically the presbytery has been given an extra bay by inserting a step opposite the first nave piers and by screening off the east aisle bays for use as an organ chamber (N) and a chapel (S). The west tower may be late 14thc, although its diagonal buttresses appear to be added. Its bell openings are no help; the north is 15thc, the south and east apparently 14thc and the west 19thc.. and an embattled parapet. On top of the tower is a neo-classical bell-cote of lead. The exterior nave and aisle walls are embattled too, and the church is faced with flint. The angle shafts of the chancel provide the only signs of Romanesque fabric, but there is a reset stone carved with a cable moulding reset in the west wall of the north aisle, and the font is 12thc too.
37. St Peter, Gunton, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Gunton is now a northern suburb of Lowestoft; the church standing between modern housing and the Pleasurewood Hills family leisure park, which occupies the site of Gunton Hall to the N of the church. The medieval village had all but disappeared by 1602, when the population was only three. By 1821 it had grown to 87, and in 1868 it was described as a small village two miles NW of Lowestoft whose principal residences were the New and Old Halls (National Gazetteer). St Peter’s consists of a nave and chancel in one without a chancel arch, and with a S porch to the nave and a N vestry to the chancel, and a round W tower. The church fell into disrepair in the 17thc., and was restored under the patronage of Charles Boyce, the work being completed in 1700. It again fell into ruin, and was restored again by the Fowlers of Gunton Hall in 1899-1901. This restoration was very complete: the roofs were retiled, the E wall was demolished to ground level and rebuilt, most of the windows were replaced and all the nave and chancel walls were rebuilt from the tops of the windows. The 19thc. flintwork is easily distinguishable from the older work. Nave and chancel are 12thc., with some original quoins surviving and elaborate N and S nave doorways. One N nave window and the blocked remains of a S chancel window are also of that date. Other windows have Y-tracery or are plain pointed lancets, but most belong to the 1899-1901 restoration. The E window is a 19thc. triplet, but above it in the gable is what seems to be a genuine 13thc. lancet, that must have been re-set when the wall was rebuilt. The S porch appears 15thc., of flint and brick, although it has sometimes been dated to the 17thc. restoration and the 19thc. N chancel vestry is of flint. The 12thc. tower (see the tower arch) has two 13thc. lancets in its W face, but the bell-openings are 15thc. (again, sometimes dated to Boyce’s restoration). The plain parapet is of brick. To the N of the church, separated by approximately three metres from the nave wall, is a parish room of 1990, known as the annexe. This is of flint, in a stripped Romanesque style. In the porch is an octagonal shaft on an octagonal base, supporting the worn and damaged octagonal bowl of a 13thc. font or stoup. Romanesque sculpture is found on the N and S nave doorways and the plain tower arch is also recorded here.
38. All Saints, Hacheston, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hacheston is a village lying on the road from Framlingham to Wickham Market in east Suffolk. This road, now the B1116, follows the line of a stream that rises in Framlingham and runs into the river Alde at Blaxhall. The land is flattish and arable, and the church is built on a rise at the southern end of the village.
39. St Mary, Harkstead, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Harkstead stands on the N bank of the Stour estuary, 5 miles W of its mouth at Harwich harbour and 6½ miles S of Ipswich. The village stands above Holbrook Bay in mostly arable farmland with some pasture and woodland. The church is 0.4 miles to the E of the village centre with Harkstead Hall Farm to its E. St Mary’s comprises a nave with a S aisle and S porch, chancel with N vestry and W tower. The N wall of the nave is 12thc. with two lancets, refaced on the exterior and a blocked 12thc. doorway. The masonry here is of septaria. Inside, the arch of the easternmost of the 12thc. windows has a 13thc. narrative wall painting. A brown septaria S aisle was added to the 12thc. nave around 1300. The three bay arcade and cusped Y-tracery aisle windows indicate this period, although the windows themselves were renewed in 1875. The S doorway and its porch are of the same campaign. In the 15thc. the aisle was extended E to form a short chapel alongside the chancel. Here the windows are Perpendicular. The chancel itself was rebuilt in 1867, with a knapped flint facing. It has no chancel arch, although there are coloured marble shafts supporting the westernmost roof truss, and its furnishings are all of the 19thc., although it retains a beautiful 14thc. Easter Sepulchre on the N side. The tower is 15thc. with characteristic W window and bell-openings, and a plinth with tracery and quatrefoil reliefs. It is constructed of a mixture of flints, septaria, ashlar, pebbles and brick or tile, and its brick battlemented parapet may be 18thc. Some idea of the extent to which the church has been restored may be gained from the etching of 1846 by Henry Davy. This shows a view from the SE, and all the visible windows of the S aisle, chapel and chancel lacked tracery, as did the tower bell-openings which had been blocked with brick. The first restoration, in 1867 by W. Slater and R. H. Carpenter of London, involved the rebuilding of the chancel in knapped flint with Ancaster stone dressings in a style of c.1270-1310. The remainder of the church was restored the same firm’s designs in 1875. The 12thc. N windows and doorway and the 13thc. wall paintings were revealed at that time, and tracery was added to the aisle windows. The nave and aisle were re-roofed at this time, the porch restored and the vestry added. The only feature recorded here is the N doorway.
40. St Augustine, Harleston, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Harleston is in rolling arable land 2 miles W of Stowmarket. The church and the moated hall site are close together to the NE of the village centre. St Augustine’s is a single-cell church of flint and septaria with a wooden bell-turret on the W gable and a thatched roof. The N and S nave doorways are 12thc. in origin. The S, plain and heavily restored, is practically obscured by a pair of evergreens planted to either side. The N is blocked, and the blocking includes pieces of ashlar from the jambs and a long, curved stone, presumably from the arch. None of these has any carved decoration. The other windows are 13thc. and plain. Inside there is no chancel arch but a 14thc. wooden screen. There was a restorationc.1860, to which belong the W front including the bell-turret, the E window and the chancel furnishings.
41. St Andrew, Hasketon, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hasketon is towards the SE of the county, just west of the A12 at Woodbridge; the landscape here is the typical arable farmland of the East Anglian plain. The village is on rising ground on the N side of the valley of a stream; one of a network that drains into the Deben estuary at Martlesham Creek, S of Woodbridge. The church stands in the centre of the village, S of the village green.
42. St Mary, Hawkedon, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Mary’s has an aisleless nave, chancel and W tower. The nave has a S doorway under an attractive flint and brick porch, and a blocked N doorway. Nave and chancel are 14thc., and the nave has a wooden organ gallery at the W end by Detmar Blow (1912). The tower is 14thc. too, with diagonal buttresses at the W. Construction is of flint, once rendered but much of the rendering has gone now. The font is the only Romanesque feature.
43. All Saints, Hawstead, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hawstead is a village in the hundred of Thingoe, some 3 miles S of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The church stands on a by-road at the NW end of the village, alongside Church Farm, and Hawstead Hall is half a mile from the church, to the NE. All Saints' is a big church consisting of a broad aisleless nave with a S porch, a lower chancel with a N vestry and a W tower. Nave and tower are of knapped flints with stone dressings; the E gable of the nave rebuilt in brick. The chancel is of flint and septaria and the vestry of flint with brick repairs. The nave is substantially of the 15th-16thc., and has Perpendicular windows and buttresses decorated with flushwork panels, but the N and S doorways are 12thc. work, clearly re-set. Inside is a fine 16thc. hammerbeam angel roof, unfortunately mutilated during the civil war of the 17thc. and over-restored in 1858. The S porch is 15thc. The chancel has a blocked round-headed window towards the W end of the S wall, indicating 12thc. fabric. It was re-modelled and probably lengthened in the early 13thc. (plain N and S lancets), and other windows date from all periods fromc.1300 to the 15thc. The chancel arch was heavily restored in the 19thc. The tower is of one campaign, completedc.1500. It has a polygonal S stair, diagonal W buttresses with flushwork panels, and more intricate flushwork on the battlemented parapet. Above the W doorway is a frieze bearing the arms of Sir Robert Drury and his family's alliances by marriage. Hawstead church is mainly celebrated for its monuments: a late-13thc. knight effigy reputed to be Sir Eustace fitzEustace; tombs of the Drury family dating from the 16thc. and early 17thc., and the overblown Italianate tomb of Sir Thomas Cullum (d.1664).
44. All Saints, Hemley, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hemley is on the estuary of the River Deben in SE Suffolk, 4 miles from its mouth. The village is on the W side of the estuary, where the flat, marshy land alongside the river begins to rise to a sandy, arable landscape. Hemley was formerly a port and a centre of salt manufacture but nothing of this remains; only the church, Hemley Hall half a mile to the N, and a few houses clustered around the end of a lane from Newbourne that stops at the edge of the marshes. The church had fallen into disrepair by the 19thc. and was largely rebuilt in 1889. It consists of a W tower and a nave and chancel of mixed knapped flints, septaria and assorted stone rubble, decoratively laid with the effect of crazy paving. Nave and chancel are similar height and width (though separately roofed), and separated by a wooden chancel arch on corbels. The nave has a 14thc. S doorway under a timber-framed porch dated 1889. The blocked N doorway is ofc.1300. All the windows are 19thc., in a variety of styles of the later 13thc. and early 14thc. The tower is of red brick with blue brick diapering and may date fromc.1500. The only Romanesque feature is a Purbeck marble font.
45. St Peter, Henley, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Henley is a substantial but compact village 4 miles N of the centre of Ipswich in hilly farmland. The land is now used mainly for cereals and sugar beet, but in 1086 it included pasture and woodland too. The church stands in the centre of the village, its small graveyard surrounded by houses. St Peter's consists of a nave with a large N vestry, chancel and W tower. The flint nave is 12thc. in origin, with a remodelled S doorway decorated with chevron under a 19thc. porch. The 13thc. N doorway now provides access to a knapped flint vestry; originally the village school of 1838, but rebuilt here in 1904 to serve as vestry and Sunday school. The nave windows are generally 15thc. and renewed, except for a three-light terracotta window in the S wall dating from the 1520s and probably taken from Old Shrubland Hall (demolished in the 19thc.). The nave originally ended just W of the lateral doorways, but was extended westwards when the tower was added c.1500. Nave and chancel are of equal width and there is no chancel arch. The flint chancel retains its 13thc. piscina and aumbry, and has 13thc. lancets on the N and 14thc. windows on the S, but it was rebuilt in 1894. The tower arch is tall and the flint tower itself has diagonal buttresses to the W with flushwork decoration, a Perpendicular W window and bell-openings, and a battlemented parapet of brick. An inscription over the W door asks for prayers for the soul of Thomas Seckford and his wife, Margaret. Seckford was a clothier who died in 1505 and was presumably responsible for funding the new tower. Major restorations took place here in 1846, 1894-95 and 1904, and another was in progress, involving the nave roof, in November 2005. The S doorway is described below, along with a capital re-set alongside it.
46. St Mary, Henstead, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Mary's is a flint church with a single, thatched nave and chancel, no chancel arch and a tall 14thc. W tower with diagonal buttresses and flushwork on the parapet. The two nave doorways are 12thc. work; the S protected by a 14thc. porch.
47. St Peter, Hepworth, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hepworth is midway between Bury St Edmunds and Diss, approximately 9 miles from each. The land here is low and rolling and given over to arable cultivation. There are common lands to the NW and SE of the village, which consists largely of houses and farm buildings around a junction of minor roads, with the church, rectory and Grange Farm at the eastern edge. St Peter's was burnt down in 1898 when its thatch caught fire, and only the tower, the walls and the porch survived the blaze. It was rebuilt by J. S. Corder of Ipswich. It is a church of the 13thc. and later, consisting of a nave, chancel and W tower, all of flint. The nave is tall with high 15thc. windows to N and S, and its roof has been raised. The N and S doorways are 14thc.; the S under a flint porch, which is, almost entirely 19thc. work. The nave wall behind and to the W of the S porch has a large brick repair in the shape of an arch, suggesting that the doorway and porch were once further W. Inside is the blocked N entrance to a rood loft. The chancel, almost as high as the nave, is early-14thc., with reticulated E, N and S windows and a contemporary S doorway and piscina. The tower has diagonal buttresses with flushwork at the top, a late 13thc. W doorway and tower arch and a 19thc. W window. The upper part has been rebuilt and the structure strengthened with iron clamps; this work dated to 1677 by ironwork on the W face. More clamps were added at a lower level in 1828. The bell-openings are of brick and date from the 17thc. restoration. The parapet is plain and the pyramid roof is fitted with a W dormer. Inside the church are two loose stones, a capital and a voussoir, from a 12thc. doorway.
48. St Margaret, Herringfleet, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Margaret's has an aisleless nave, chancel and round W tower. The nave and chancel are rendered; the nave thatched and the chancel roofed in tiles. There is a 12thc. window in the N chancel wall. The nave has a 12thc. S doorway under a later porch and a 13thc. N doorway, now blocked. The flint tower is of two storeys, the upper rendered. There are small round-headed lancets in the lower storey; two on the N side, two on the S and one on the W. The upper storey has 12thc. double bell openings in the cardinal directions, alternating with plain round-headed windows of brick with chamfered jambs. 12thc. features described here are the S nave doorway and the bell openings of the tower.
49. St Mary, Hinderclay, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hinderclay is a village in N central Suffolk, 6 miles W of Diss. It stands in rolling arable land and consists of a cluster of houses around a crossroads with the church off the southern arm and the hall just 180 m to the S of it. Nearby, on the edge of Hinderclay wood, were found the remains of an early Iron Age settlement, and there were Roman pottery kilns in the wood too.
50. St Peter, Holton, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Holton is on the northern slope of the Blyth valley; the village has been engulfed by the westward spread of Halesworth, and although its churchyard setting is spacious, the surroundings are industrial. Holton is home to one of Bernard Matthews' three UK turkey processing factories.
51. All Saints, Honington, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Honington is in the N of the county, 6 miles S of Thetford and just 4 miles from the Little Ouse that forms the boundary with Norfolk. The benefice takes its name from the Black Bourn, a stream that winds its way N through most of the parishes in the benefice before it joins the Little Ouse N of Euston. It is an agricultural area of small villages and farms. RAF Honington to the W of the village was opened as a bomber base in 1937, but no aircraft have flown from here since 1993 and it is now the RAF Regiment depot. All Saints church stands in the centre of the village, surrounded by a very small churchyard. It is of flint and consists of a nave with a W tower and a chancel with a N vestry. The nave is aisleless and has an elaborate 12thc. S doorway under a fine 15thc. porch with battlements and flushwork decoration. The N doorway is 13thc., tiny and plain. The nave windows were all replaced in the 14thc. (S) or 15thc. (N), but the chancel arch is 12thc. and very small. The chancel is 14thc. with an ogee-headed window and a piscina in the S wall. The tower and its arch are 14thc. with a battlemented parapet. A polygonal SW stair turret of brick has been added. The interior had its 15thc. benches removedc.1914 and replaced with pitch-pine pews, but some of the bench ends have been incorporated into the chancel choirstalls. It was all whitewashed in the 1940s, and a set of wallpaintings (see Cautley) covered up.
52. St Mary, Horham, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Horham is in the arable land of the East Anglian plain in central N Suffolk, 7 miles SE of Diss. The land falls away to the E of the village to the valley of a tributary of the Waveney, running form S to N, and on a plateau to the NW of the village is the site of a World War II US airfield. The church is in the centre of the village, alongside the B1117 Eye to Stradbroke road.
53. St Michael, Hunston, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Hunston is nearly 8 miles E of the centre of Bury St Edmunds in flattish farmland, mostly arable. The village lies on the minor road linking it with Stowlangtoft, Badwell Ash and Walsham-le-Willows, and the church stands in farmland 0.3 miles S of the village centre. It is in the grounds of the former hall, but this is now gone and there are farm buildings S of the church. St Michael's has a W tower, nave with S transept and chancel. The tower is of knapped flint and dates from the 14thc. The nave, chancel and transept are of flint in mortar. The nave is 13thc, with N and S doorways of that period, the S under a timber porch. There is a blocked 13thc. S window and the N windows are 14th and 15thc. work. The transept has a W doorway, E windows and a double piscina, all of the 13thc. The chancel and its arch are 13thc. too, but its roof has been heightened with brick and it was restored in 1887. A carved 12thc. window head is reused in the masonry of the chancel N wall, and the author thanks Colin Myram for alerting him to its presence. The plain font is also said to be 12thc.
54. St Mary, Ickworth, Suffolk, England

Parish church (redundant)
The church is set in trees to the SW of Ickworth House (National Trust), but is now extremely dilapidated with its windows boarded up. It is padlocked and a notice declares it to be unsafe. It is a flint building consisting of nave with south aisle and north porch, chancel and rendered west tower. The church was built by Augustus John, Earl of Bristol, in 1778, and the same earl added the south aisle and the tower in 1833. A loose 12thc. window head is reported by Pevsner (in the porch) and Mortlock (by the west door). The author was unable to gain admission.
55. St Andrew, Ilketshall, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Andrews is a flint church with nave, chancel and W tower. The tower is round in its lower part, which has a pointed lancet of c.1200 to the S and an inserted W window of c.1320. The upper part of the tower is octagonal with Perpendicular bell-openings on the cardinal faces and flushwork tracery on the others, and a battlemented parapet decorated with flushwork tracery. The nave has a 12thc. N window and 12thc. doorways to N and S, the N plain and blocked; the S more elaborate and protected by an early Tudor brick porch. It has been heightened and given Perpendicular windows. The chancel has one 13thc. lancet but otherwise appears 14thc. or later. Nave and chancel are separately roofed but there is no chancel arch. Wall paintings in the nave are currently under restoration. The only Romanesque features described here are the two nave doorways.
56. St Mary Elms, Ipswich, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Mary's is on Elm Street in the business centre of Ipswich; its parish including the three law courts, the police station and the civic centre as well as offices and shops. Few people live in the parish now, and the church's mission is directed to the business people who work nearby. To that end it stays open during the day and celebrates a daily Eucharist. There was an earlier church near this site, dedicated to St Saviour, but St Mary at Elms is known to have existed by 1204 and may be older. It was rebuilt in the early 14thc. The 14thc church had a nave and chancel, together occupying the length of the present nave, with north and south transepts, and presumably a tower. The north aisle and the west tower, both of brick, were added in the 15thc. At some stage the south transept was removed, and in 1883 a new chancel was added to the east, and the old chancel incorporated into the nave. This work was done by E. F. Bisshopp, and included the lengthening of the north aisle and the provision of an organ chamber on the south of the new chancel. Brick vestries were added on the north side of the new chancel shortly afterwards. An engraving by Henry Davy shows the church in 1842, before all of this work. What we have today is a 14thc flint nave and north transept with 19thc windows in a 15thc. style. Davy's view shows 14thc windows in the nave. The nave has a 14thc. flint porch with niches for statues, protecting a 12thc. south doorway, said by Toll (following Tricker) to have come from the old church of St Saviour. Battlements of brick have been added to the nave. The north aisle now has an arcade of five bays; the two easternmost of 1883 and the rest 15thc. The chancel arch, chancel and its vestry and organ chamber are all 19thc. The brick west tower is tall at 54 feet (16.5 m) high but wide too, so that it does not seem lofty. It has octagonal clasping buttresses and a battlemented parapet. Several 19thc restorations are known. In 1848 the south porch was repaired and the 12thc doorway restored. There was a restoration by R. M. Phipson in 1860, and the major rebuilding of the chancel by E. F. Bisshopp in 1883. Romanesque sculpture is found on the south doorway.
57. Ipswich Museum, High Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, England

Museum
The museum contains only one object of interest to this project, but it is an important one. The fragment of a Tournai marble font bowl was discovered eight feet underground in the filling of the Tower Ramparts ditch on the north side of the town when foundations were being dug for Pretty and Co.'s Box factory in 1894. The author is grateful to David Jones, Keeper of Human History at the museum, for arranging access to the store.
58. St Nicholas, Ipswich, Suffolk, England

Parish church (redundant)
The church stands on Franciscan Way, part of the Ipswich inner ring road, in an area of office buildings between the town centre and the docks. It became redundantc.1980 and came into the possession of Ipswich Borough Council, who rented it to the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust. In 2001 the Diocese bought it from the Council for £1, in order to convert it into a flexible meeting place in the centre of Ipswich for the church, community, business and charities. It includes a conference, meeting and performance space, a bookshop and a restaurant. The church consists of a nave with aisles of flint and rubble construction, of four bays without a clerestorey but with 15thc. dormers at the east end to light the rood area. The arcade, S doorway and aisle windows suggest a date ofc.1300. The aisles were extended for one bay alongside the chancel in the 15thc., and on the N side a knapped flint gabled chapel was added E of this, which is now the Revelations bookshop. On the S side of the chancel, a passage leads to the glass-walled restaurant of 2004-05. The S nave doorway is protected by a brick porch. The W tower is 15thc, of knapped flint with diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet with elaborate flushwork and crocketed pinnacles. It was rebuilt in 1886. St Nicholas's has no Romanesque fabric but houses the most celebrated Romanesque sculpture in the county: a tympanum carved with a boar, a relief of St Michael and the Dragon and three reliefs of apostles.
59. St Peter, Ipswich, Suffolk, England

Parish church (redundant)
The area around St Peter's is historically one of the most interesting in the town. On College Street stood the Augustinian Priory of St Peter and St Paul until 1527, when Cardinal Wolsey founded his Cardinal College of St Mary on the site. It was not completed, but a gateway survives. St Peter's Street itself runs S from the town centre and boasts a good collection of timber-framed shops and houses. St Peter's is at the southern end of the street, at an intersection of the inner ring road. Beyond it to the S are derelict waterfront warehouses standing on the dockside. Its present position is by no means attractive, therefore, but work is under way on the regeneration of the waterfront, and St Peter's is likely to benefit from them. It was made redundant in 1979 along with three other town centre churches, and the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust was founded at the same time to ensure their maintenance and preservation. In 1981 these four churches, St Lawrence, St Peter, St Clement and St Stephen, were passed to the Borough Council by the Church Commissioners for a nominal sum and then offered to the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust on long leases. The intention was that the Trust would undertake repairs and find appropriate new uses.
60. All Saints, Ixworth Thorpe, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Ixworth is 6 miles NE of Bury St Edmunds, and Ixworth Thorpe (the suffix indicating a marginal settlement) lies 2 miles to the NW of Ixworth and consists of the church and scattered farms and houses along the road to Thetford. The land here is flattish with low rolling hills and is given over to arable cultivation. All Saints church is alongside the road on the southern edge of the settlement. It has a nave and chancel and a low W tower of red brick with a timber bell-turret. The nave is only slightly higher than the chancel, and they share a thatched roof. The nave has a two-storey 15thc. brick S porch, and nave and chancel are mortar rendered. Both nave doorways are 12thc., the N now blocked, and part of the 12thc. chancel arch remains on the north. There is a N rood-stair entrance alongside it, but this is later. All the nave windows were replaced in the 15thc. The chancel is 13thc., with small pointed lancets surviving on the N side and a plain S doorway of the same period. The piscina dates fromc.1300, the S chancel window is 15thc. and the E window has wooden glazing bars and tracery — probably 18thc. Repairs were carried out by D. E. Nye and partners of Surrey in 1961-63, and repairs to the tower proposed in 1970-72 were not proceeded with. The N and S nave doorways are recorded here.
61. St Michael, Tunstall, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Tunstall is a good-sized village in E Suffolk, towards the S, 7 miles NE of Woodbridge and 6 miles from the coast. The landscape here is flat arable and heathland. To the E is Tunstall forest and to the S the disused Bentwaters airfield. The church stands alongside the main street at the eastern end of the village.
62. St Peter, Ubbeston, Suffolk, England

Private house, formerly parish church
Ubbeston is in central E Suffolk, towards the N of the county, 5 miles SW of Halesworth, in the arable boulder-clay plateau typical of High Suffolk. The church and hall site that are all that remain of the village are sited on the rising N bank of a stream that flows eastwards to join the river Blyth at Halesworth. There is a slightly larger settlement at Ubbeston Green, 0.4 miles to the S.
63. St Mary, Ufford, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Ufford is a substantial village in SE Suffolk, clustering around a network of by-roads off the old road from Woodbridge to Wickham Market, and now bounded to the W by the new road - the A12 Ufford by-pass. To the E of the village the river Deben flows from N to S, and the church overlooks the pastures of its water meadow.
64. St Mary, Uggeshall, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Uggeshall stands in rolling arable land in E Suffolk, 6 miles S of Beccles and 5 miles inland. The church, along with Church Farm and Manor Farm form an eastern nucleus with Uggeshall Hall 0.7 miles to the N, and the main cluster of houses half a mile to the west. The church has a nave with a taller chancel, both thatched, and a solid and stocky W tower with a wooden bell stage, also thatched. The nave is of rendered flint and can be dated to the 12thc. by its N and S doorways. There is a 13thc. lancet at the W end of the S wall, and the other nave windows have Y-tracery or Perpendicular tracery, pointing to remodellingsc.1300 and in the 15thc. The flint chancel is not rendered. Its chequered brick and flint E wall is 18thc., and the entire chancel appears to have been remodelled in the 19thc. It has a variety of windows (plain lancet, geometrical, Y-tracery and flowing) all of which have been renewed. There is a N organ room, also 19thc. The flint and chequered flushwork masonry of the W tower is not as high as the nave, but its plan is large and has heavy diagonal buttresses and a polygonal stair turret in the middle of the S wall, adding to the impression of bulk. The tower was apparently never built any higher than this. The 19thc. wooden bell stage has a gabled roof. Inside the church there is no chancel arch and the tower arch is tall and 15thc. The chancel retains its 14thc. sedilia, but the rest of it has been remodelled in the 19thc. Curiously the chancel roof is lower than the nave roof inside the church. The N and S doorways are described below. The former is blocked, and the latter has been remodelled and is under a tiny timber-framed porch.
65. St Mary, Walpole, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Mary's is a flint church with ashlar dressings consisting of a nave with a three-bay N aisle, chancel and W tower with a short spire. The church was rebuilt in 1878 and at first sight it appears to be all of that date, but the S nave wall includes a doorway with a 12thc. arch, and the chancel has pilaster strips suggesting 11-12thc. fabric. The S doorway is the only feature described here.
66. St John the Baptist, Wantisden, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St John's is a remote church standing in flat arable land in SE Suffolk, 6 miles E of Woodbridge. There is no village and no dwellings near the church; the nearest settlement being Tunstall, a mile to the N. Wantisden Hall, a 16thc. brick building, is 0.6 mile S of the church. There has apparently never been a village of Wantisden, and at the beginning of the Second World War the entire area was requisitioned as an airfield: the USAF Bentwaters base. It remained active during the Cold War, and was closed in 1993, but much remains to the W of the church. The church is significant in having one of only two coralline crag towers in the county (the other is at nearby Chillesford), a 15thc. structure with diagonal buttresses and a polygonal S bell stair whose top has been rebuilt without battlements. The nave and chancel are of mixed flint, pebbles and crag rubble. They are 12thc. and from that period they retain a narrow chancel arch, a N chancel window and a S nave doorway. The N doorway is later, plain and pointed, and neither doorway has a porch. The nave has a later medieval SE rood stair, and the other nave and chancel windows date from the 14thc. to 15thc. There is also a 12thc. font, unusual in being constructed of ashlar blocks.
67. St Mary Magdalene, Westerfield, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Westerfield is a village at the northern edge of Ipswich, where the town gives way to arable farmland. It clusters around a crossroads where a minor road cuts the B1077 that meanders N from Ipswich to Debenham and Eye. The church is on the lesser road, just E of the crossroads, and consists of an unaisled and mortar rendered nave and chancel in one, without a chancel arch, and a W tower. The nave and chancel windows all have two-light intersecting tracery ofc.1300 except for two 13thc chancel windows, the S one blocked. There is no S doorway; a 12thc. doorway in the normal position having been blocked in a major restoration of 1867, and its carved stones reset inside the church in the sill, arch and jambs of the window that replaced it. This window is a copy of others in the nave, and alongside remains the stoup, which would originally have been in the porch next to the doorway. Henry Davy's etching of the exterior in 1842 shows that the doorway was protected by a small embattled porch, described by David Elisha Davy in 1829 as being modern and of red brick. On the N side of the church is a flint Church Room, with a hall, vestry and kitchen. This was built in 1986-87 and provides access to the church through the N nave doorway. It replaced a brick schoolroom, added to the nave in 1840, which was successively a school, a Sunday school and a vestry before it was taken down in 1986. A vestry on the S side of the chancel was taken down in 1840 when the schoolroom was added. The W tower is of flint with diagonal buttresses at the W but none at the E. It has an embattled parapet with flushwork decoration. The tower may date fromc.1300, but its W doorway and window are 15thc. Its bell openings have lost their tracery. The interior is dominated by a magnificent hammerbeam roof, continuous over nave and chancel. The only 12thc work surviving here are voussoirs from the old S doorway, now reset in the SW nave window surrounds, and two carved stones reused in the exterior walls of the tower.
68. St Andrew, Westhall, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Andrew's is a flint church with a nave, S aisle, chancel and W tower. In fact the present S aisle is the original nave, and its smart W front, consisting of a doorway with a triple arch above, remains inside the early 14thc. W tower. A scar on the E wall of the tower indicates that the nave was originally taller and more steeply roofed. The 12thc. S doorway also remains in situ. An aisle was added to the N of the original nave in the 13thc., with an arcade of five bays, and was apparently widened, making it much wider than the original nave, in the later 14thc. The N nave doorway dates from this period. At this time the original chancel was abandoned and a new one attached to the N aisle. Signs of the original chancel arch remain on the exterior E wall of the present S aisle. A datestone (JW 1884) on this wall presumably refers to a restoration. Romanesque sculpture is found on the W and S doorways and the W window.
69. St Petronilla, Whepstead, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Whepstead stands on a low hill in the largely arable farmland of W Suffolk, some four miles S of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The village is small, consisting of a few houses with outlying farms along the B1066 and its side roads; the church is on one of these minor roads W of the village centre. St Petronilla's has a nave, chancel and W tower. All windows of the nave and chancel are Y- or intersecting tracery ofc.1300, or other early 14thc. forms. The N and S nave doorways are 13thc.; the S under a knapped flint 19thc. porch, and the N now giving access from the church to a vestry. The nave is broad and bright, with a chancel arch having 12thc. jambs and a round head decorated with 19thc. neo-Romanesque chevron. There is a S rood stair set in the E reveal of the easternmost nave window. A scar on the E wall of the tower shows that the nave was originally taller. The 15thc. tower arch is tall and four-centred and a wooden gallery has been erected halfway up it. The tower is 15thc. too, and was repaired in 1582 (date on buttress). It has very broad E buttresses with a stair turret set in the angle of the SE buttress, diagonal W buttresses and an embattled parapet. It was apparently taller when built, and certainly had a spire but a storm in 1658 brought the spire down, and the battlements postdate that collapse. The church is entirely mortar rendered except for the S porch, the chancel E wall and the parapet of the tower, all of flint. The only Romanesque sculpture is found on the chancel arch.
70. St Mary, Wherstead, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Wherstead is one of the nine parishes of the Shotley peninsula, the neck of land between the Orwell and Stour estuaries in SE Suffolk. The peninsula belongs to the Sandlings, and the sandy soils support arable farming in a landscape that rises fairly steeply from the Orwell estuary in the E. Wherstead is now just outside the loop of the A14 that forms the southern and western sections of Ipswich's outer ring road, cutting through Wherstead Park before crossing the Orwell on the spectacular Orwell bridge. The village itself consists only of a few houses clustered close to the stable block of Wherstead Park, which is now occupied by the offices of EON Energy, the company that runs Powergen. The church lies between this cluster and the Hall, half a mile to the E. According to Laverton, 'Wherstead church stands on one edge of a very large rectangular embanked enclosure of unknown date, and nearby is a Roman site that might have some connection with the supposed Roman river crossing of Downham Bridge, but neither of these is visible except in aerial photographs.' The entire peninsula displays evidence of continuous settlement going back to the Neolithic period.
71. St Andrew, Wissett, Suffolk, England

Parish church
St Andrew's is a flint church consisting of a long unaisled nave with N and S doorways, the S under a 15thc. porch; a chancel with a N vestry, and a round W tower. Both doorways are 12thc. work, but the nave windows are Perpendicular. At the NE of the nave is a rood stair. The chancel is a rebuilding ofc.1800. The W tower has a plain, narrow arch towards the nave, narrow round-headed lancets at the level of the nave roof and oculi in the next storey. The oculi were discovered blocked and the N one reopened in 1977. The bell-openings are pointed and above them an added top storey has gargoyles and a battlemented parapet with flushwork merlons. Romanesque features described here are the two nave doorways and the tower arch.
72. St Mary, Wissington, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Wissington (also known, most notably on the signpost to the church, as Wiston) is a parish of dispersed houses and farms on the N side of the river Stour, which forms the border with Essex. It has no village centre, although there are a few houses and a farmhouse near the church. This stands on raised ground in a moated site alongside the farmhouse. St Mary's is a simple two-cell church with a rectangular nave and a lower, narrower chancel with an apsidal E end. The present apse and its arch are entirely 19thc., but built on 12thc. foundations; a view of 1832 shows the church with a flat E end. The S priest's doorway in the chancel straight bay is 19thc., but this bay also has small 12thc. lancets and its original chancel arch, elaborately carved with chevron archivolts and decorated nook-shafts. The nave has carved 12thc. N and S doorways; the S under a timber porch, and the N now inside the 19thc. vestry. Small round-headed lancets survive in the N and S nave walls, but all of the nook-shafted windows, in both nave and chancel, are 19thc. work. Over the W gable of the nave is a 19thc. timber bell-turret with a pyramid roof. The church is of flint, the exterior mortar rendered and the interior plastered, with the remains of 13thc.-15thc. wallpaintings in the nave. Four 12thc. corbels have been re-set in the interior and exterior walls; one over the chancel arch, one over the apse arch, and on the outside, one above each of the chancel straight bay windows. There are several loose stones, at present behind the pulpit. The only one with 12thc. carving is a nook-shaft base.
73. St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Withersdale is nearly 3 miles E of Harleston and a mile and a half from the river Waveney, which marks the border with Norfolk. The church stands alongside the B1123 and the moated hall site, with a medieval farmhouse, is 500 yards (457 metres) to the S. The rest of the village has migrated W along the road towards Harleston, forming the settlement of Withersdale Street.
74. St Leonard, Wixoe, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Wixoe is a village in the Stour Valley on the Essex border E of Haverhill. St Leonard's has an aisleless nave and chancel in one, sharing a single roof and with no chancel arch. The nave walls are slightly thicker than the chancel (visible on the interior by a ridge in the wall at the position of the chancel step), and the mortar used in the flint cladding is yellower in the nave. There is a 19thc. vestry on the N side of the chancel. The nave has a modern timber west bell turret. The N and S nave doorways are 12thc., the N blocked and overgrown; the S protected by a 19thc. timber porch. The S chancel doorway is 19thc.
75. All Saints, Wordwell, Suffolk, England

Parish church (redundant)
Wordwell lies alongside the B1106 Bury St Edmunds to Brandon road, just over five miles N of the centre of Bury. The tiny village lies at the SE corner of the enormous coniferous plantation of the King's Forest, and consists of just the church, a few houses, Wordwell Hall and the hall farm. The living was abolished in the 18thc. and the rectory demolished in 1736; after that date the church was served by priests from neighbouring parishes until the parish was combined with that of West Stow.
76. St Mary, West Stow, Suffolk, England

Parish church
Discoveries of flint tools give evidence of Neolithic occupation of the area, and the remains of an Iron Age settlement and finds of Romano-British pottery attest to the continuity of its occupation until the 2ndc. AD. Some time in the mid-5thc., Anglo-Saxon settlers established a village here that remained in occupation until c.650. Around that time the settlement moved 1½ miles upriver to the present West Stow village site. The old site was abandoned, and cultivated as ploughland until the end of the 13thc., when a storm covered it with blown sand, effectively preserving the 5th.-7thc. village. From the mid-19thc. onwards, rich finds of early Anglo-Saxon grave goods were discovered in the area of the unsuspected village, but a major excavation was not undertaken until 1965-72, when a team headed by Stanley West uncovered most of the settlement. In 1972, West broached the idea of a reconstruction of the village on site, and this is now open to visitors as West Stow Anglo-Saxon village.