Cookley is in East Suffolk, towards the N, some 2½ miles SW of
Halesworth, in the arable boulder-clay plateau typical of High Suffolk. The
village comprises just the church, a few cottages and a farm along a by-road
that follows the course of a stream that flows eastwards to join the river
Blyth at Halesworth. The church and houses are on the rising ground to the N of
the stream, while to the S is the woodland of Broomgreen Covert.
St Michael's consists of a nave with a S porch
and a N vestry, a chancel and
W tower. Chancel and nave are of the same height, the
chancel slightly narrower. There is no chancel arch. The nave is of flint with some reused ashlar. It
has a 12thc. N doorway, now inside a 20thc. vestry of
concrete block construction with steel-framed windows. The later S doorway is
protected by a 20thc. timber porch. The nave windows
are Perpendicular in style but largely replacements of 1894. The
chancel arch is 19thc. too, but the chancel has one 13thc. lancet and two reticulated windows of
c.1320 on the S, with some original tracery. The geometric E window is
19thc. The chancel is of flint, septaria and cobble
construction. At the west end of the nave is a blocked 12thc. window into the
tower, and this is also 12thc.; of flint, plain and unbuttressed but taller
than it once was. There is a brick pointed lancet in the S wall, but the W
window and bell-openings have the Y-tracery ofc.1300. The battlemented
parapet has flushwork decoration and is later still. In a restoration of 1894,
described as 'shocking' by the normally unshockable Cautley, the entire
interior was remodelled and most of the old furnishings, including the
box-pews, were thrown out. The Stuart pulpit ended up in Chediston church, and
part of the rood
screen was
recently discovered supporting a henhouse, and now stands in the SE corner of
the nave. The only Romanesque sculpture here is on the N nave
doorway.
