Felixstowe St Edmund

St Edmund, Felixstowe

There's nowhere else in Suffolk quite like the west end of Felixstowe, and the further west you go, the less familiar it gets. Beyond the comfy middle class suburbia around St John the Baptist, we come into a flat land, where straight lines of red brick terraced houses are home to junk shops, bed and breakfasts and faded hotels, with the straight line of the sea beyond.

Langer Road, The old main road to the docks, cuts through this, although hardly anyone ever uses it anymore. The port of Felixstowe main road bypasses the town now, and this area slumbers in a way that reminds me more of the north of England than anywhere else.

On Langer Road, beside the school, we find St Edmund. This little patch of land was within and owned by the parish of St John the Baptist, and was intended for a parish hall, down here where many of the parishioners lived. However, in 1923, it was decided to build a daughter church instead.

Mortlock suggests that the actual design of the hall was adapted, to turn it into a church, but I do not think that this can be right. This is quite an elaborate little building, and it is hard to see that it was ever intended as anything other than a church.

There are fine details in the stonework, elaborate stained glass windows, and high, transept-like window alcoves. Curiously, the church is orientated towards the west.

St Edmund sits, peaceably enough, in west Felixstowe. This is the east end - the holy end is in the west.

The church has a Gothic-style Anglo-catholic interior, in keeping with its mother church, although on a much smaller scale, and the worship here is now much more mainstream. But it still maintains services every Sunday, and, like St John the Baptist, had a strong musical tradition - I've met several old men who grew up in this area, and remember being members of its choir.

Peter Stephens, a good friend of this site, has kindly contributed some photographs of the interior that he took in the Summer of 2005. They may be found below - click on them to enlarge them.

St Edmund, Felixstowe, is located on Langer Road to the west of the town. Unfortunately, it is kept locked.