St Andrew, Brockley

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www.suffolkchurches.co.uk - a journey through the churches of Suffolk

The church appears not far from the road, but the top of the tower pokes above an apparently inpenetrable thicket of trees. You might even think the place abandoned, but this is an illusion, for a lane takes you down towards the Hall and then jinks up below the church. From the west you can see that this is a well-cared for place, the dirt track I encountered when I first came this way a quarter of a century ago now replaced by a neat gravel path which leads through a gate into the churchyard on the south side of the church. As you enter you pass an incription at the base of the tower asking you to pray for the soul of Ricardus Coppyng. Richard Copping ordered in his will of 1522 that the plancher of the ruffe of the steple (that is to say the wooden platform of the roof of the tower) at Brockley be fullie fynysshed and ended at my propere cost & chardge.

The tower was new at the start of that century, and was preceded perhaps 150 years earlier by the rebuilding of the nave. Intriguingly, the furnishings on the south door, a handle and a keyhole escutcheon, appear to be contemporary with that rebuilding. If you look closely at the handle you can see that it has tiny dragons on it like the one at Withersfield.

You step into an interior that underwent a considerable 19th Century restoration, but not an unkind one. The arched canopy of a tomb recess on the south side of the nave is dramatic in this small space, and its presumed date of the 1330s probably gives us an idea of when the nave rebuilding happened here. There are piscina drains set in the window sills to north and south, giving just an inkling of the devotional life of this place at that time. The Victorians moved the font to beneath the tower, where it has for companions a charity board and the late 15th Century clappers that rang out the bells in the tower when it was new. They are preserved on display with the words our duty done in belfry high now voiceless tongues at rest we lie. The charity board includes a bequest made by Thomas Sparke to be paid yearly out of a farm lying in Hartest the Instruction of poor Children in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

The 1870s east window depicts Christ the Good Shepherd as Charity flanked by the female allegorical figures of Faith and Hope.It is the work of Ward & Hughes who were quite good before Thomas Curtis's bold colours and sentimental mawkishness overwhelmed them. The figures of the four evangelists below are painted on tin sheets and probably date from the restoration of the chancel in the 1860s. All neatly done, and all in all this is a lovely church which perhaps few people will have heard of, and even fewer have visited, and yet it is always open every day.