St Mary of the Assumption (now)

Ufford

St Mary of the Assumption, Ufford, Suffolk

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.St Mary's is a substantial flint church of nave with S aisle and S porch, chancel with N vestry and W tower. The nave appears 15thc.; it is tall with Perpendicular clerestories on both sides, despite on having an aisle on the S. There is 11th -12thc. herringbone masonry on the N wall, however, and one N window has Y-tracery ofc.1300, so its Perpendicular appearance results from a remodelling rather than a complete rebuild. This included the nave roof, with embattled tie beams, every alternate one of which has been curtailed at each end and finished with an angel (perhaps in the 18thc.) to look like hammerbeams. The base of the rood screen and the rood beam above also survive and date from the same period. The S aisle has a four-bay arcade; the two E bays are early 13thc. with cylindrical piers and round moulded capitals, and the two W bays with octagonal piers and capitals. All the arches are pointed and of two chamfered porch orders. The aisle windows are 15thc. and the 15thc. S is of knapped flint with elaborate flushwork and sculptural ornament. The chancel arch and tower arch are both 15thc. The chancel has a 13thc. angle piscina and dropped sill sedilia, but its windows are again 15thc.The S chancel doorway is something of a puzzle. Its arch is tall and pointed with a double fluted chamfer and its label is a 13thc. type with elongated human head label stops, but its capitals are a 12thc. flat-leaf type and do not fit very well. It is described in full below. The doorway from the chancel into the shed-like flint and brick vestry provides another enigma. It is round headed, and Pevsner calls it a reused Norman doorway, but the profile of the continuous arch and jambs belongs to the 14thc. rather than the 12thc. This too is described below. The flint W tower may be 14thc., but if so it has undergone the same 15thc. remodelling as the rest of the church. Its W window and tall three-light bell-openings are Perpendicular, although the W doorway is simpler than might be expected and could be earlier. It has diagonal buttresses with chequered flushwork, and they run right up the tower to terminate in pinnacles at the corners of the embattled parapet. There is a polygonal stair on the S wall. St Mary's is celebrated above all for its font cover, a multi-storeyed tapering octagonal construction with flying buttresses, tracery panels and figures in niches that reaches up to the roof timbers and terminates in a pelican. Cautley has called it 'the most beautiful in the world', and it would be difficult to disagree.