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- 1. St Mary, Lakenheath, Suffolk, England
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Parish church Lakenheath is a large village in the NW of Suffolk, between Ely and Thetford and only 10 miles from either. To the W is the fenland that runs into Cambridgeshire, and the Cut-off Channel, built in 1964 as part of the fen drainage system, runs alongside the B1112 that forms Lakenheath High Street. To the E was once Lakenheath Warren, set up by the prior of Ely in 1251 as a source of rabbits for the table — a practical solution to the exploitation of land that was unsuitable for crops or pasture. Over the centuries the land was over-grazed by the rabbits, and soil erosion became a problem. In the 1660s sand dunes spread over 1000 acres at Lakenheath warren. The site of the warren is now Lakenheath airfield, built for the RAF in 1941. In 1948 the Americans moved B-29 bombers in, and they took over the administration of the airfield in 1951. Today Lakenheath is home to the 48th Fighter Wing of the USAF, England's largest USAF operated fighter base.
- 2. St Bartholomew, Orford, Suffolk, England
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Parish church Orford is a tiny coastal town in the sandlings of SE Suffolk, 16 miles due E of Ipswich. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Survey, but there was a successful port at the mouth of the river Alde and a market here by 1138. The town received a boost from the building of the castle by Henry II between 1165 and 1173, but its importance fell as the port silted up; the sea throwing up the long sand bar that now extends for over 5 miles from Orford Ness down to Hollesley. The town is simply laid out around the market place, with the church at its E end and the castle 0.27 km W of the market at the edge of the town. The road from Sudbourne runs right through the centre, alongside the market, to end at the quay at the town's S edge.
- 3. St Mary, Santon Downham, Suffolk, England
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Parish church The village stands on the southern bank of the Little Ouse that forms the boundary with Norfolk. The tiny village of Santon, which was subsumed into the parish in 1963, is over the river in Norfolk. Santon Downham is in the middle of Thetford forest and is now the home of the headquarters of the Forestry Commission for the East Anglian district. Downham Hall, N of the church, near the river, was the focus of a sporting estate until the early years of the 20thc., but the Mackenzie heir sold up in 1918, the Forestry Commission acquired the land in1924, and the hall was demolished from 1925. New houses for the Commission workers were built around the green, to the W of the church, in the 1950s, effectively shifting the village centre to the SW. Between 1920 and 1970 Santon Downham was almost entirely devoted to forestry, with almost all of its male inhabitants employed by the Commission. Since the '70s many of the residents have exercised their right to buy their houses, and less than one in twenty of the 250 present inhabitants work in forestry. The area was anciently dominated by warrens, with Santon Warren to the N, Santon Downham Warren to the S. These were set up in the Middle Ages (see Preface to Suffolk), often by the monastic houses of Ely and Bury. As at Lakenheath, the sandy soil was prey to sandstorms, especially if it was overgrazed by the rabbits, and one such engulfed the village of Santon Downham over a period of several decades, culminating in 1668.
- 4. St Margaret, Stoven, Suffolk, England
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Parish church Stoven is in E Suffolk, 5 miles S of Beccles and 5 miles from the coast. The village consists of the church, a few houses and a public house on a low hill in a landscape that is otherwise is flat and arable. A moated site 300 yards N of the church may indicate a hall. St Margaret's was entirely rebuilt in a neo-Norman style between 1849 and 1858, but the 12thc. S doorway was reused, and provided sources for much of the Victorian ornament. As it stands, the church consists of a nave and chancel, both mortar rendered, and a flint W tower. Where the mortar is flaking on the N side the body of the church is seen to be of flint and bricks. In 1808, before the rebuilding, the church was described by Davy who reported that it had a nave and chancel under a thatched roof and a small square steeple of flint. An 1823 description records that there were no buttresses on the side walls, and that there were three small pieces of stone with grotesque carvings let into the wall above the N door. These carvings are now lost.
- 5. St Peter, Thorington, Suffolk, England
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Parish church St Peter's has an aisleless nave and chancel, both rendered, and a round W tower of flint. The nave has very thick walls, probably 11thc., which have been reduced in thickness in their lower parts inside in order, according to Cautley, to increase the available width. There are 13thc. N and S doorways; the N under a porch, the S now giving access to a 19thc. flint vestry. On the exterior, above the S vestry, can be seen a chip-carved arch, identified by Pevsner as 'the surround of a lavish window.' The chancel arch is wooden, and the chancel largely a rebuilding of 1862. The elaborate tower arch is 19thc. neo-Romanesque, but an original chip-carved voussoir is reset above it. The tower is of three storeys. In the first is a 19thc. neo-Romanesque W window; the second is articulated as a band of blind arcading with plain 12thc. lancets at the cardinal points (the E visible inside the church). The third storey has 12thc. double bell-openings at the cardinal points. The tower is capped by an unusual early-16thc. octagonal parapet of brick with triple-stepped merlons. The font, while 13thc., is of Sussex marble and of a type common in Sussex. It may be an import. A photograph is included, but no description. Romanesque sculpture is found in the bell-openings of the tower, the arch in the S wall of the nave, and the voussoir above the tower arch.
- 6. St Mary Magdalene, Westerfield, Suffolk, England
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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.
- 7. St Mary, Wissington, Suffolk, England
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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.
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