St Mary and St Peter, Kelsale

home index e-mail what's new?

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

The major restoration of the interior here was at the hands of ES Prior. He was a pupil of Norman Shaw, and Shaw's restoration morphs seamlessly into Prior's. You step through the south aisle into the west end of the nave, and the immediate impression is of space. The typical 15th Century East Anglian font has plenty of elbow room, and a 1518 bequest to the painting of the font in the church of Kelshale probably marks its installation. Set on the west wall behind it is a remarkably large and ornate reredos. It's the 1880s work of Ernest Geldart, best known for the remarkable High Victorian decorated church at Little Braxted in Essex, where he was rector. It was made by Cox, Sons & Buckley. The central panel of the Crucifixion is labelled lignum infamiae, 'the tree of shame', and it is flanked by Adam and Eve with lignum scientiae, 'the tree of knowledge', and Christ and St Paul with lignum vitae, 'the tree of life'. The outer panels of the seven part reredos depict scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin on the left, and scenes from the life of St Peter on the right. The reredos came as part of Shaw's restoration of the chancel, but barely 10 years later Prior had moved it to the north side of the sanctuary to allow more light in from the east. It was later reset in the south chancel aisle where I first saw it about thirty years ago, and then in 1999 it was moved to the back of the church. The alarming green carpet in front of it, installed since my last visit, is unfortunate.

Overlooking the font and the reredos is Samuel Clouting, who died in 1857. His life size figure stands above a list of his charitable works. Beside it, another charity board records Edmund Cutting's gift in 1641 of one dozen of bread... to be given to the Poor of this Parish every Lord's Day forever, and Steven Eades' gift of forty shillings a year... to be distributed by the churchwardens to the poor of this parish on every Christmas Day forever. I assume that, like most charitable donations to parishes, these were commuted by the Church Commissioners in the 20th Century. Turning east, the view is through Prior's furnishings in both nave and chancel, punctuated by the wrought iron screen and rood group of 1895 by Charles Pratt & Sons, all to Prior's design. Overlooking the furnishings is a large range of decorative Arts and Crafts glass with symbols of St Mary and St Peter, made by Powell & Sons to Prior's design. The figures of Moses and St John are earlier, designed by Ford Madox Brown and made by J Aldham Heaton. Shaw's restoration brought the 1870s east window by Camm Brothers of Birmingham, and the chancel north window, also made by Heaton, includes figures by Morris, Marshall & Faulkner & Co.

An earlier interloper in all this is the splendid 17th Century pulpit. As James Bettley points out in his revision of the Buildings of England volume for East Suffolk, it must have been here before 1631, for that was when the parish of Aldeburgh sent a carpenter to look at it as a model for their own. At the time of the 1851 Census of Religious worship the Reverend L R Brown was clearly making good use of it. I've mentioned several times on this site that rural 19th Century East Anglians much prefered listening to a sermon than attending divine worship, and that is writ large in the return for Kelsale. On the day of the census only 60 people, plus the scholars, out of a parish population of 1157 attended the morning service. However, there were 450 plus the scholars for the afternoon sermon, which probably included many of Kelsale's non-conformists who'd attended chapels in Saxmundham or Kelsale's Primitive Methodist Chapel that morning. As the Anglican revival took hold, afternoon sermons would gradually become a thing of the past.