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If you
were asked to name 400 of Suffolk's
500-odd parishes, there's a fair chance
you wouldn't think of Stanstead. The
village is a quiet backwater, straddling
the main road on the outskirts of larger Glemsford,
but the church of St James is on the hill
above, looking out over the valley. You
can't help wondering how many people
looking for Stansted airport, twenty five
miles off in north Essex, absent-mindedly
type this spelling into their GPS and are
surprised to end up in the middle of
nowhere. I'd last been here
about ten years previously, and it was a
delight to roll up on a sunny morning in
April 2013 and to find St James in such
fine fettle, the churchyard full of
primroses and celandines, the church open
and welcoming. A few years previously I'd been told by a
usually reliable source that this church
was threatened with closure by the rather
eccentric Rector whose benefice covered
the parish at the time. He felt that not
enough people were coming to hear him
preach. The irony is, of course, that St
James is still open to pilgrims and
strangers everyday, but that minister's
main church across the valley in the
largest village in the benefice was, and
is, kept locked. And St James is the
lovelier church, I think. Cautley treated Stanstead
with considerable disdain during his
great survey of the 1930s, but the High
Victorian character that he so abhored
has matured, and here at St James is to
be found in full flower.
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With
a sweet irony it is the priest's door in the
chancel which is kept open. It is directly into
the chancel that you step, so you might not
notice the original 14th century south door, with
all its fittings. It's worth a look. Internally,
the chancel is of good, honest rural 19th century
quality, from the sequence of tiles in the
sanctuary, which are surely an indication of the
hand of diocesan architect Richard Phipson, to the memorials to
Rectors Samuel Sheen pere et fils - this
is grand Victorian Gothic writ homely.
The tower makes the church
appear larger than it is; inside, it is
tiny. On the north wall is a good set of
Queen Anne arms, probably the single most
interesting pre-Victorian survival here.
Either side are two windows, one with
some surviving medieval glass in the
tracery, the other with excellent 19th
century glass, thoroughly in the spirit
of its medieval predecessors. It even
recreates the familiar sense of an
amalgamation of medieval glass collected
from elsewhere - but it isn't. I wonder
who it was by.
Finally, the glass in the
east window. As far as I'm aware, this
artist has also not been identified, but
it is a good complement to the tilework
of the sanctuary, a serious crucifixion
of the 1870s perhaps.
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