The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"Knodishall"
Parish church
Knodishall is a small village in E Suffolk, 3 miles E of Saxmundham and
3 miles from the coast. It comprises a few houses clustered near the church and
the hall site on gently falling land on the N side of the Hundred River valley.
It is now an outlier of Knodishall Common; a larger settlement a mile to the
SE. The flint and cobble church comprises nave, chancel
and W tower; the nave and chancel separately roofed by
similar in height and width and with no chancel arch
separating them. There are small modern vestries to N and S of the
chancel, and the S side of the church has brick
buttresses. The nave has no lateral doorways now; both having been blocked in
their lower parts to serve as windows. Entry is through the W tower doorway.
The blocked N doorway indicates a 12thc. date for the nave. The nave and
chancel windows, insofar as they are medieval, are of
various dates betweenc.1300 and the 16thc. The chancel contains the remains of a 14thc. piscina. The W tower can be dated toc.1460 by a
bequest from John Jenney and his wife, whose brass is inside the church. It has
diagonal buttresses and a plain parapet decorated with flushwork. In complete
contrast to the attractively muddled exterior, especially on the S side with
its mixed masonry, brick buttresses and jumble of windows of different dates
and styles, the interior is uncluttered, brightly whitewashed and very well lit
through the S windows. The only Romanesque work recorded here is the N doorway.