Palgrave sits
just on the edge of the lovely town of Diss, but
Diss is in Norfolk, and as you head over the
railway line and the infant Waveney you enter
Suffolk. The countryside soon opens out into flat
fields under a wide sky.
In medieval times, Palgrave was actually two
parishes. The westerly one, Palgrave St John, was
subsumed into this one, and that church has
completely disappeared. However, St Peter is
walled neatly into its graveyard at the heart of
the village, which spreads neatly around it. Seen
from the Diss road, St Peter looks a rather
simple, unelaborated structure, the twin lights
of the east window about as plain as it is
possible to be, but as you come closer the
magnificent 15th Century flushwork porch appears
from behind a yew tree. St Michael and a dragon
contended in the spandrels, and there are
characterful heads carved in the entrance arch.
You step through into a surprisingly wide nave
under a delightfully painted late medieval roof.
Marian monograms and symbols punctuate the
whitewash. Once, many small Suffolk churches must
have been like this. Ahead of you is the font,
unlike anything else in Suffolk. Clearly Norman,
but much more elaborate than most, its most
intriguing features are the faces in each corner.
Again, this is a more intimate experience of the
faces we normally see as corbels, but Palgrave
has these too, medieval characters along the
lines of the arcades. The jewel-like light of the
nave is thanks to the work of the stained glass
artist Surinder Warboys, who has her studio
nearby at Mellis. Here is one of her familiar
abstract windows in the south aisle, the light
flooding through it, transmuted.
Back outside, there stands to the south of the
chancel the grave of the common stage waggoner
John Catchpole, with a relief at the top
depicting his waggon pulled by a train of six
horses. He died in 1787 at the age of 75, and his
inscription tells us that My Horses have done
running, My Waggon is decay'd, And now in the
Dust my Body is lay'd. My whip is worn out &
my work it is done And now I'm brought here to my
last home.
Simon Knott, September 2018
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