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Aldeburgh, as Scott
Fitzgerald might have observed, is
different from the rest of Suffolk.
Actually, if a writer was going to say
this, perhaps E.M. Forster is more
likely; he spent a lot of time here with
his friend Benjamin Britten, and there's
a memorable photograph of them sitting
together in a boat. Aldeburgh,
pronounced Orld-brur, is, of
course, the home of the Aldeburgh
festival; but at anytime you'll find it
full of visitors, many of them mild
eccentrics, dressed colourfully for the
season. Perhaps only in Lavenham
would you find it harder to track down a
local. The town's shops are thriving as a
consequence, but even in winter the
streets can become a car park on a sunny
day. Don't even think of being able to
park in high summer.
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The
difference between Lavenham and Aldeburgh,
though, is that people often come here to stay.
The desirable 18th and 19th Century houses the
length of the front are one of the reasons. Crag
House, just down from the church and one of the
largest, was where Britten lived for many years.
Britten was born 20 miles north at Kirkley, in Lowestoft, where his
father was a dentist. But it took him three years
in America to realise that Suffolk was where he
wanted to be, and so at the height of wartime he
undertook the dangerous journey home with his
partner, Peter Pears. They rented out the old
mill at nearby Snape, where
Britten wrote his first masterpiece, Peter
Grimes, based on Crabbe's story The
Borough, about a fishing village, where the
anti-hero Grimes suffers the wrath of the
community's hypocrisy, for his ill-treatment of
his apprentices. The sound of morning service
that reaches Ellen and the boy on the beach is
from this church, for the Borough, of course, is
Aldeburgh. It also appears in Wilkie Collins'
finest novel, No Name, as Aldborough.
In later life, Britten and Pears
moved to the Red House, near the quiet seclusion
of the golf course, but their real local
testament is, of course, Snape Maltings, the
great arts complex three miles away, finished in
the years before Britten's tragically early death
in 1976.
Given that this town was a popular
and wealthy resort in the 19th Century, it is no
surprise that the church has been almost
completely restored, and very little internal
evidence survives of its medieval liturgical
life. Aldeburgh's Catholic priests today minister
the sacraments at Our Lady
and St Peter, at the top of the hill
100 yards to the south. But St Peter and St Paul
is a fine, municipal Anglican parish church, and
externally, it is interesting. The south porch
adjoins the pavement, and has arches in its east
and west walls to allow processions to pass
within the precincts of the graveyard. This was
built by the Holy Trinity gild, right on
the eve of the Reformation. Because of its
proximity to the road, the church has an imposing
presence. The grand 14th century tower is not
typical of the coast. You enter the church from
the west, into the darkness beneath the tower,
very like that at Debenham. This
church is always open during the day, and has a
cheerful welcome notice. You step into a warm,
bright interior, with plenty of 19th century
touches.
The finest feature here is, of
course, the Britten memorial. It is by the artist
John Piper, in stained glass, and shows images
from three of his church parables: The
Prodigal Son, Curlew River, and The
Burning Fiery Furnace. It sits in the north
aisle, and gets enough light to fill the aisle
with colour. The font sits in front of it.
The
colour of the sanctuary tempers its rather stern Tractarian makeover,
but there are also plenty of reminders of the
life of the Borough in years and centuries gone
by. The lifeboat disaster memorial is a grand
example of late Victorian copperwork at the west
end. Rather finer is the town war memorial in the
south aisle, the golden rays of the dying
soldier's nimbus illuminating the inscription and
everyone said to his brother be of good cheer.
There is a fine monument in the south chapel to
Lady Henrietta Vernon. This chapel was the chantry chapel of the
Holy Trinity guild before the
Reformation. Large squints sit either side of the
chancel arch, marking the positions of altars. Today, a
fine, early 17th century pulpit stands in
front of one: the documentation still exists for
its commissioning. The wooden angels guarding the
sanctuary are a curiously naive touch. There's
decent glass in both chancel and south aisle east
windows. St Cecilia is happily present, and
reminds us that the musical tradition of
Aldeburgh predated Britten. The lyrical tradition
did as well, because against the arcade in the
north aisle is the memorial to the poet George
Crabbe.
If
you are looking for Britten's gravestone, don't
look for anything grand. The large one towards
the east wall is a memorial to the crew of the
lifeboat who all died in the 1899 disaster here.
This is moving, with the arch piety typical of
that decade.
But Britten's stone sits in
the common run, along with the other 1976
graves. Beside it, space was reserved for
Peter Pears, who died in the 1980s. By
one of those acts of serendipity, the
musician Imogen Holst, daughter of the
composer Gustav Holst, lies just behind
them. It doesn't take
long, looking around, to locate the
graves of other musicians and singers,
who all came to Aldeburgh attracted by
Britten's light. Also buried here is
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, one of the
Garretts who in the 19th Century built
the Snape Maltings complex as part of
their industrial empire. She, of course,
is famous for being the first female
doctor in England, and she was also the
first ever female mayor in England - of
Aldeburgh, of course.
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