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I'd not been back to Higham St Stephen for
years. My last visit had been late one wet afternoon back
in November 2003, so perhaps I had not seen it at its
best, remembering it as rather a gloomy place. And yet,
Higham St Stephen is special. At first sight an East
Anglian round-towered church, it is in fact the late
1850s work of Sir George Gilbert Scott, his only complete
church in Suffolk, and presumably his only round-towered
church anywhere. The tower has echoes of the Norman one a
few miles off at Little Saxham, with the addition of a
jaunty conical cap and a solid base course which makes
the church appear as if it has been carefully turned out
of one of those aluminium jelly moulds like my Granny
used to have. I imagined Scott as a giant bestriding the
Victorian countryside, putting down a mould of his church
and lifting it again with a vast hand, leaving a fresh
new church wobbling slightly and then drying in the sun.
This Higham is not to be confused with the larger village
of Higham St Mary on the other side of Ipswich. It was
part of the parish of Gazeley until the mid-19th Century.
However, by the time of the 1851 census of religious
worship the increased population of Higham was giving the
Church of England some cause for concern, because where
the Industrial Revolution made its appearance in a
community, non-conformism was sure to follow. So, in 1861
a separate parish was created, and Scott was commissioned
to do the church.
My other main memory of my previous visit was quite how
much difficulty we'd had getting to see inside. Perhaps
it was partly the result of the gloom of the day, but I
recall that the church had an air of dereliction about
it, the porch full of filth and clutter. The curling
notices on the board including one for a bookshop with a
five-digit Ipswich telephone number, which I knew had
been discontinued almost twenty years before. There was
no suggestion on who you might contact for the key to the
church. Eventually we tracked down the address of a
churchwarden who seemed surprised that anyone would want
to see inside, but eventually relented and came and
opened up for us. I asked him why he kept the church
locked all the time. He gave a hollow little laugh, as if
it were plainly obvious. "Because it would be
pillaged if we didn't", he replied. This despite the
fact that the church contained nothing of value and was
the only locked church for miles around.
Coming back in mid-April 2019 I was at first pleased to
see there was now a keyholder notice on the board by the
road, and that generally the building looked more cared
for than it had in 2003. The porch was largely clean and
shipshape, and the same keyholder notice was up in the
porch, too.
And now I have to tell you that this is still a most
inhospitable parish, if the church keyholders are
anything to go by. The first one I rang was not at all
pleased to hear from me. In fact, he sounded cross,
aggressive even. He told me that it was far too
inconvenient for him to come and open the church, and
that I should go away and make an appointment. I
patiently explained that I was on a bike ride from
Ipswich, and this would be difficult, but he told me that
he didn't care about that and I must make an appointment.
I asked if there was anyone else I could ring, but once
again I was rebuffed. Bizarrely, each time he told me to
go away it was in almost exactly the same form of words,
as if he were reading from one of those scripts people
use when they ring you up to tell you that you've been
mis-sold PPI or you've been in a car accident that wasn't
your fault.
In the end, I gave up. I quickly rang up one of the other
numbers on the list, just in case he had the same idea
and wanted to head me off, but once again I was answered
by someone who was not happy. "It's very
inconvenient", he told me. I went through my litany
again of having cycled from Ipswich, and even offered to
come and get the key, and in the end this seemed to wear
down his resistance, for at last with an exasperated sigh
he agreed to come and open up as long it was for no more
than twenty minutes.
I thanked him profusely when he arrived, but
he waved my thanks away. "You're very inconvenient,
ringing up in the middle of the day like this," he
told me. This seemed an extraordinary thing to say. Over
the last thirty-odd years of visiting churches I have
contacted hundreds of keyholders, and as far as I recall
I have never rung any of them up late at night or in the
early hours of the morning. "It's never been a
problem before," I told him lamely, wondering why
they even bothered to have a keyholder notice at all.
St Stephen is unusual for a 19th Century rebuilding in
Suffolk because Scott appears to have designed or
commissioned everything inside, even down to the altar
frontals which were still in use more than a century
later. The furnishings were the work of the Cambridge
carpenter James Rattee, the glass is by Clayton and Bell,
but everything passed under Scott's careful scrutiny. I'm
not the world's biggest fan of the work of Clayton &
Bell, but on a small scale like here they are very good.
The colours vary from predominant jewel-like blues and
greens towards the east to gorgeous oranges and reds in
the west window in the baptistery beneath the tower, so
that the building would react to the sunshine in
different ways throughout the day. It is like a magical
trick. The north aisle, as so often in 19th Century
churches, can be rather gloomy of course, and stone
pulpits are not to everybody's taste, but this little
church is so all of a piece it can't but help delight.
What a pity the floor tiles have been allowed to get so
dim and dusty! How they must have shone with colour when
Scott first had them put in place! How sad that the place
no longer appears to be cared for! I scurried round
taking photographs as quickly as possible, not easy to do
under the watchful eye of someone who doesn't want to be
there, and certainly doesn't want you to be there either.
Eventually I felt I'd stayed as long as I could
reasonably hope to get away with, thanked the grumpy
keyholder profusely once again, and headed on to the
nearby medieval parish church at Barrow, which is more
remote, full of fascinating delights of every century,
and thankfully open every day. It was like balm to the
soul. But I was still a bit shaken at my unpleasant
reception by the parish of Higham St Stephen, and if I am
honest a bit cross as well. They probably think they are
being terribly good custodians by being obstructive to
strangers and pilgrims and keeping the likes of you and
me out of their church, but as the Churchwatch charity
has told us, a church which is kept locked all the time
is more likely to be vandalised than one which is open
regularly, is more likely to be broken into and is even
more likely to have something stolen from it. The advice
that Ecclesiastical Insurance gives to its clients begins
If possible, your church should be open during the
day. And, as the Bible itself reminds us, do not neglect to show hospitality to
strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares.
I don't suppose I shall ever go back to Higham St
Stephen. Quite frankly, the poor attitude of the
keyholders has left a nasty taste in my mouth, and
mentioning the event to a number of contacts I discovered
that I was not the first to experience hostility and
aggression here. In all the years I have spent visiting
churches, almost three thousand of them now, this was
only the sixth time I've ever been refused entry to a
church. Sadly, it was the first time in Suffolk. And if
this had been my first attempt to gain access to a locked
church then I don't suppose I would ever have dared to
try and do so again.
Simon Knott, November 2019
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