The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Suffolk (pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales))
Parish church
The small priory of Austin canons at Letheringham was set in low, rolling country alongside the river Deben in east central Suffolk, three miles south of Framlingham. There is no discernable village; only what remains of the church, converted to parish use, and the Abbey Farm alongside it, surrounded by an empty arable landscape.
The present church of St Mary’s incorporates the two western bays and the tower of the priory church. It is tall and boxy, its walls rendered with mortar. It has a 12thc south doorway under a brick porch of 1685, with a Dutch gable, and buttresses have been added on the side walls and at the eastern angles. The 12thc north doorway survives too, but this has been reset facing inside the church. The south windows are of c.1300 with three-light intersecting tracery. There are no windows on the north side. The east end of the church fell into disrepair and was demolished in the 18thc, but part of its north wall survives as the churchyard wall, and to the north of this are ruinous remains of the monastic buildings. The east window, rescued from the rubble and reset, is a three-light affair with cusped intersecting tracery. The 14thc tower is of flint and rubble, unrendered, with diagonal buttresses decorated with flushwork, a polygonal SE stair and an embattled parapet with flushwork panels. The tower arch is tall and incorporates some 12thc material, and the church also has a 12thc capital, loose but displayed behind bars.
Benedictine house, former
The Romanesque abbey church was begun by Abbot Baldwin in 1081, and it thus belongs with the massive building boom that followed the Norman Conquest. Its East Anglian contemporaries were Abbot Simeon's Ely Abbey (begun c.1082) and Bishop Herbert de Losingia's Norwich Cathedral (begun 1096). The abbey church had a 4-bay eastern arm with an apsidal east end surrounded by an ambulatory with 3 radiating chapels. Like the post-Conquest church of St Augustine's Canterbury, begun by Abbot Scotland (1070-87), Baldwin's church had a large crypt underlying its eastern arm, so that the sanctuary was raised above the level of the W part of the church. This plan was well-adapted for churches that held relics and attracted large numbers of pilgrims. It allowed the shrines holding the relics to be arranged around the transept and ambulatory and the chapels opening off them, so that pilgrims could venerate the relics without entering the choir.
The eastern arm was complete by 1095 and in that year the body of St Edmund was translated to the new church. Fernie has argued that the original plan was revised to effectively lengthen the eastern arm by one bay at the W, and that this accounts for the eastern aisle of the transept, and the fact that there appear to be doubled crossing piers at the E, corresponding to the end of the eastern arm and to the line of the transept E arcade a bay to the W. It has also been argued that this lengthening of the eastern arm was a response to the details of Herbert de Losingia's ambitious plan for his new cathedral at Norwich. As part of this enlargement, the entire church was widened, so that the nave is some 14 feet wider than the chancel.
Work proceeded westwards, and the lower part of the W front was reached in the abbacy of Anselm of St Saba (1121-48), an Italian and the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the same name. Anselm of St Saba joined the monastery of Sagra di San Michele (Piedmont) as a young oblate and subsequently became Abbot of Saint Saba in Rome, serving twice as a Papal Legate (1115 and 1117) before his election to the abbacy of Bury in 1121. His connections with Sagra di San Michele, where the celebrated sculptor Nicholaus was to carve the Porto dello Zodiaco, have been suggested as a source for features of the surviving Romanesque sculpture at Bury (Zarnecki (1999)). The W front was very wide but not especially tall. The central section, corresponding to the nave and aisles had three arched recesses, similar to Lincoln cathedral. In these were set bronze doors by Master Hugo, artist of the Bury Bible (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 21). Flanking the central block were two-storey chapels dedicated to Saint Denis (below) and St Faith (above) on the N side, and to St John the Baptist and St Catherine on the S. The facade terminated at either end with an octagonal tower. Abbbot Anselm also built the Norman Tower, whose elaborate carvings give some idea of the splendid original decoration of the W front of the abbey church.
The south side of the west tower fell in 1430, and in 1431 the east side followed. The north side was demolished in 1432. A papal bull granting indulgences for the repair of the `clocher' estimated the cost of repair at 60,000 ducats. Wills of 1457-8, 1460 and 1465 provided money for the fabric of the new tower. Repair work continued until 1465, when the church was seriously damaged by a fire which started in the west tower. More extensive repair work was undertaken, and in 1506 a western spire was completed. After the Dissolution in 1539 most of the church was soon reduced to ruins. What remained of the west front was the rubble core of the three main arches flanked by a smaller arched opening on either side and with an octagonal tower at the southern end. Domestic structures were built into the dilapidated west front in the 17thc., and records show that they were altered several times in the following centuries. In 1863 the S end had become a Registrar's Residence with a Probate Registry in the S tower.
The earliest excavation of the site was by Edward King in 1772-86, and in 1865 Gordon Hills published an account of the abbey written for the British Archaeological Association's visit in the previous year. This was described by Whittingham (1952) as 'the most authoritative account of the site' then available. A documentary study of the library and the fittings was produced by M. R. James (1895). Between 1928 and 1933 a programme of clearance and restoration of the ruins was undertaken by the Bury Corporation and the Ministry of Works, and in 1952 Arthur Whittingham produced his own assessment, including a plan of the site. An excavation of the eastern arm was carried out in 1957-64 by the Ministry of Works under the direction of A. D. Saunders and M. W. Thompson of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, resulting in the clearance of the eastern end of the abbey church to its original floor levels, and consolidation of the masonry (see Gilyard Beer (1970)). A programme of conservation and stone replacement was undertaken in 1999-2000, and in 2004-06 the west front was converted into a row of houses with rear gardens. A Heritage Assessment was produced in 2018 by Richard Hoggett Heritage that usefully sums up the history of investigation on the site. As part of the present investigation, access has been gained to several of the West Front properties, and we are most grateful to the residents for welcoming us into their homes.
The ruins to the east of the west front contain very little ashlar, although a few well-preserved bases of the roll and hollow chamfer type may be seen and are illustrated here. Within the west front are a few carved stones, described below, and further abbey stones are preserved at Moyses Hall, in the English Heritage store at Wrest Park, and in the British Museum (see Comments below)
Chapel
Peasenhall stands in hilly arable land in E Suffolk, between Saxmundham
and Halesworth. The village is clustered around the crossing of two Roman roads. One is now the A1120 and the
other formerly linked Harleston and Saxmundham. The church stands at the
crossroads in the centre of the village and immediately to the S is the factory
of Smyth and Sons. James Smyth invented an improved seed drill in 1800, and his
vigorous promotion of a genuinely better product led to expansion within the
village and to the building of workers' terraced housing, as his drills became
the brand leader throughout southern England. Smyth's enterprise is the reason
for the unusual presence in rural Suffolk of what is essentially an industrial
village. The surrounding land was always farmed, but the farmhouses are now
outside the village centre.St Michael's consists of a nave, chancel and W
tower; the nave and chancel of knapped flints and the
tower of flint. The nave has a N doorway under a 15thc. porch with diagonal buttresses, niches and flushwork decoration. There is no S doorway. At
the W end is a gallery, erected in 1894 as an organ
loft and to house the choir. The chancel has a S
vestry. All of this work, except for the W tower and
the N porch, result from a restoration of 1860-61 paid
for by J. W. Brooke of Sibton Park and using R. D. Chantrell of London as
architect. He took down the old nave and chancel and
rebuilt them. He also heightened and repaired the tower. The newer masonry is
clearly visible and includes the bell openings and the embattled parapet with its flushwork decoration. The church
was seen by Henry Davy before the restoration, and his NE view was published in
1843. The most obvious differences are in the nave, the tower and the
chancel. Chantrell lengthened the nave by approximately
ten feet, so that Davy’s print shows only two windows E of the
porch rather than the present three. The tower was not
so tall in 1843 and had simpler bell openings, but a similar parapet, which
Chantrell presumably reused. The chancel E window was
formerly smaller, and there was a small window at the W end of the N wall
rather than the present window at the E. The only Romanesque feature is the
late-12thc. font, which was moved to its present position in the nave from a
site under the tower in
1909.
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.
Parish church
Spexhall is in NE Suffolk, two miles north of Halesworth. The Roman road called Stone Street (now the A144) runs from north to south through the parish along a high plateau from Bungay to Halesworth. The village centre is simply a few houses and the church at the junction of two lanes, 0.6 mile west of the Roman road, and from this point the land falls away to the SW towards Wissett, where a valley runs SE to join the river Blyth at Halesworth. Spexhall Hall stands 0.7 mile north of the church and Spexhall Manor 0.6 mile south of it.
St Peter’s has a nave with a south porch, a chancel of the same width and height as the nave, and round west tower. The nave is of flint and rubble with a slate roof. It is 12thc, with walls thicker at the bottom and a blocked early-12thc north doorway. The south doorway is 14thc under a 15thc porch of knapped flint with flushwork panels on the buttresses. This porch was restored in 1733. The nave windows are 15thc. The chancel is also of flint, but of a different build from the nave, and probably early 14thc in date. It has a tile roof. Its south doorway is early 14thc and its windows 15thc. Unlike the nave it is buttressed, with a flying buttress over the priest’s doorway. The east wall was rebuilt in 1713 in brick with a diaper pattern of lattice, but the east window dates from the 19thc, its 1713 predecessor having been condemned by the incumbent Charles Craven (1847-77) as “of mean structure of two lights” and replaced in Victorian Perpendicular. The interior of nave and chancel form a single space with no chancel arch. There is a rood stair at the NE corner of the nave and nave and chancel piscinas, both on the south wall and both with cusped heads of c1300. The tower fell down in 1725 and was not replaced until 1911, with funding from the Calverts of Spexhall manor and the parishioners. When the foundations of the fallen tower were uncovered in 1911, they were declared to be Saxon, but this is no guarantee of a pre-Conquest date. The present tower has a circular bell-stair at the SE, its windows are plain lancets and it has an embattled parapet. The tower arch is also modern. There was a bequest by William Dallyng, Chaplain of Halesworth for the fabric in 1429, suggesting that work was going on here at that time. The church was restored by J. K. Colling in the 1870s. He renewed the roofs in 1876 and added the diagonal east buttresses, but the new structure put such a strain on the chancel walls that lateral buttresses were added in 1888. A sketch of the church from the SE by Henry Davy of 1849 shows the church without its west tower and with a small wooden bell-turret over the west gable. Romanesque sculpture is found on the nave north doorway and a reset stone alongside the south chancel doorway.
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. The church is near the centre of the village and comprises a nave with a
S porch, a chancel with a N
vestry and a W tower. The nave is of flint, mortar
rendered, and has a 12thc. S doorways under an early-16thc. brick
porch and a 13thc. N doorway, now blocked. One N
window is 12thc. too, this is blocked but the splayed opening is visible inside
the church, where it frames a war memorial. 15thc. lateral windows have been
added at the E end of the nave, probably around the same time as the hammerbeam
roof. This has angels bearing shields attached to the ends of the hammerbeams,
some of which were lost in the 17thc. Three new angels were carved and added in
the 1920s, and the angel choir was completed after 1968 when the then rector
conceived the idea of making plastic replicas. The chancel was rebuilt in red brick with 13thc. detailing in
1854. It is lower and narrower than the nave, but its walls are much thinner,
so the discrepancy in width is hardly noticeable inside the church. There is no
chancel arch. The red brick N vestry was added in 1984. The W tower is 15thc., of knapped
flint with flushwork decoration on the diagonal buttresses and embattled parapet. Romanesque sculpture is found on the S
doorway.
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.All Saints’ church is a small building, 19thc. in appearance and uncharitably described by Pevsner as 'not very interesting.' It consists of a nave with a W bell-cote, a large S aisle and a chancel. The nave is 12thc., with a blocked round-headed N doorway, round-headed on the interior but with a lower 14thc. exterior opening. A timber porch covers the 14thc. S doorway. The aisle has a three-bay
arcade of the 14thc., and while the aisle windows are geometrical (i.e stylistically earlier) they all appear to be 19thc. The W front, including the bell-cote, belongs to a 19thc. remodelling. There is no chancel arch; the chancel is as wide as the nave and the division is marked by a step. It is stylistically 14thc. but apparently mostly of the 19thc. There is a N vestry. The church is largely of flint, but the N nave wall, which has only one window, towards the E, shows a mixture of flint and brick banding and ashlar blocks, with a band of red brick at the top where the roof has been heightened. A restoration of the aisle is recorded by a 1721 datestone near the S porch, and there was a restoration by F. C. Penrose of London in 1868-71, involving repairs to roof and walls and reseating. Romanesque sculpture is found on the remodelled font.
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.
Parish church
Sibton is set in rolling arable and woodland on the S side of the Yox
valley in W Suffolk, 5 miles S of Halesworth and 4 miles N of Saxmundham. It is
immediately E of Peasenhall, on the Roman road that is now the A1120. The
church stands on the A1120 at the eastern end of the village, and to the N of
it is the site of Sibton Abbey, founded around 1150 and the only Cistercian
house in the county. It is now ruinous and surrounded by woodland. Half a mile
further E is Sibton Park and the hall site. St Peter’s has a nave with a
N aisle and S porch, a chancel
with a N organ room and vestry and a W tower. The
flint nave has ac.1200 S doorway under a 19thc. porch, and the S windows, replaced in the 19thc., have plate
tracery. The knapped flint N aisle dates fromc.1500, and has a four-bay
arcade, broad, three-light windows
and a battlemented parapet outside. The N doorway to the aisle is a re-set
13thc. piece. The flint chancel was rebuilt in the
19thc., with a S doorway that copies motifs from the 12thc. nave doorway. The
tower has a plain and continuous pointed arch to the nave, but is substantially
15thc. and constructed of flints, knapped flints and septaria. It has diagonal
buttresses with flushwork decoration and a battlemented parapet with flushwork
and gargoyles below. A clear masonry break shows that the bell stage has been
rebuilt or raised. The only feature recorded here is the Transitional S nave
doorway.
Parish church
St Margaret's has an aisleless nave with a blocked N doorway and a
porch protecting the S doorway; a chancel with a long S chapel under a separate roof and a W
tower. The N doorway indicates that the nave is 12thc., and the S doorway is a
13thc. modification. The brick and flint porch is
16thc. The chancel and its chapel are 14thc. Both E
windows are Perpendicular, but of different dates. The E wall has been mortar
rendered and inappropriate barge-boards added. To the N of the chancel is a lean-to of brick, roofed with the chancel. The W tower is Perpendicular, with diagonal
buttresses and flushwork panels on the plinth.
Construction is of flint with ashlar dressings. The only Romanesque sculpture
is on the blocked N
doorway.