Nettlestead is a tiny settlement, just the church and a few houses, in rolling farmland 5 miles NW of the centre of Suffolk. When David Elisha Davy visited in the early 19thc. he noted the remains of the hall nearby. To the W of the church is the pasture of Church Meadow, and to the S a pond with a stream that runs into the river Gipping near Bramford, W of Ipswich.

St Mary’s has a tall W tower and a single nave and chancel with no chancel arch, although the chancel roof is slightly lower. The nave has a 12thc. N window; the remaining windows being 15thc. insertions restored in 1898. The blocked N doorway is 14thc. and the S doorway 15thc. under a brick porch displaying the arms of Thomas Wingfield (d.1632) and his wife Alice Poley (d.1628). The chancel windows are all 15thc. except for the E window ofc.1850. The piscina is 15thc. too. The 15thc. W tower has a Perpendicular W window and bell-openings, a polygonal S stair and a battlemented parapet. It is constructed of a mixture of flint, pebbles, bricks, septaria and reused dressed stone fragments, and among the last are three pieces of 12thc. carved window heads, similar in design to the surviving N nave window. The remainder of the church, except the porch, is rendered with cream-coloured mortar. The church was restored, re-floored and re-seated by Herbert J. Green of Norwich in 1898. He took down part of the N wall of the nave, inserting a new window. The tower, roof and other parts of the church were damaged in 1940 when a German bomb exploded in the road outside, and it remained derelict until 1950, when it was reopened after a restoration by Ernest Barnes of Ipswich to H. Munro Cautley’s designs. The tower and porch were restored by A. F. Knights of Debenham in 1986-87.

Nettlestead was held as a manor by Goti before the Conquest. In 1086 it was held by Erland from Count Alan. There were 5 carucates of ploughland, 8 acres of meadow, a mill and a church with 8 acres of land. Earl Ralph Guader (who forfeited the Earldom of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1078) enlarged the manor by adding 2½ carucates of land, 34 free men, 3 acres of meadow and a church with 70½ acres. A smaller manor here, just 60 acres of ploughland and five acres of meadow, was held by Humphrey from Count Alan. By the 14thc. it was in the hands of the Tiptofts. From John de Tiptoft it passed to his son Robert (c.1340-72), and when Robert's daughter Elizabeth married Philip (IV) Despenser it passed to that family. Again the succession was to follow the female line, through Philip and Elizabeth's daughter Margery (1397-1478). She married Roger Wentworth in 1422, and the manor apparently came to their family at her father’s death in 1424. The Wentworths were Lords of the Manor from untilc.1645, and a brass ofc.1500 in the nave is believed to commemorate a member of this family, although its inscription is lost.

Benefice of Great and Little Blakenham with Baylham and Nettlestead.

The four windows represented by the one in-situ and the three fragments were similar in type but varied in the design carved on their heads. Another window head carved with concentric bands of ornament is found 14 miles to the NW at St Michael's, Hunston, and although this too includes drilled beading the execution in general is less precise and the ornament simpler with no foliage motifs.