1. Holy Suffolk
Medieval Suffolk was Seely Suffolk, or
Holy Suffolk. The counties of Suffolk and
Norfolk between them have more than
twelve hundred surviving medieval
churches, roughly one in eight of all
those in England. Suffolk, the smaller
county, has five hundred of these, giving
it today something like one medieval
church per thousand population. That
population was much smaller in medieval
times, and there can never have been a
time when all these churches were full.
But this is to miss the point, since they
were not built for the congregational
Anglican worship they are mostly used for
today. Before the Reformation these were
all Catholic churches, and they were
built for Catholic worship. Not just for
the celebration of Mass, which was in any
case not usually intended as a
congregational event, but for private
devotions, the sacraments and for prayers
for the dead. The naves contained altars
and chapels, not box-pews and children's
corners. The aisles were designed for
liturgical processions, not just to
increase capacity. We need to remind
ourselves of this if we are to appreciate
fully what our ancestors have left
behind.
What are the threads of continuity? A
popular image of a rural parish church is
of the Harvest Festival, but in fact
Harvest Festivals were an invention of
the 19th Century. We think of the
Christmas Eve service with its lessons
and carols, the candles flickering on the
altar. But again, altar candles had
fallen into disuse at the Reformation,
being thought idolatrous, until the
Anglican revival of the 19th Century
brought them back. The first Festival of
Nine Lessons and Carols was held at Truro
Cathedral in 1880, and its first
appearance in its traditional setting of
Kings College Chapel in Cambridge
happened as recently as 1918. There
are threads of continuity, but
perhaps they are not immediately obvious.
2. The Suffolk church - an
invented tradition?
I am going to suggest that the typical
Suffolk country church is essentially a
19th Century invention. This is generally
true, even where the bulk of the church
itself is medieval. There are few Suffolk
churches that the 19th Century left
untouched. Even when the Victorians did
not make structural alterations, the
liturgical plan of virtually every
Suffolk church is that asserted by the
Cambridge Camden Society and Oxford
Movement Tractarians in the middle years
of that century. There are even fewer
Suffolk churches where that 19th Century
liturgical integrity has been altered
since, other than perhaps the removal of
heavy benches and their replacement with
modern chairs.
Between about 1840 and 1900, the interior
of almost every Suffolk church went from
being that of a preaching house to a
space in which the liturgy might be
celebrated in a seemly and fitting
manner. Chancels, in some cases closed
since the Reformation and used as
schools, meeting rooms, mausoleums and
vestries, were opened up for worship
again. At Bramford, Little Bealings,
Wickhambrook and elsewhere, the benches
were turned to face the east after
several hundred years of facing a pulpit
in the body of the nave. Medieval
fixtures and furnishings, forgotten,
ignored or neglected for hundreds of
years, were uncovered during
restorations, sometimes clumsily repaired
or even replaced, and enthusiastically
pressed back into service. Suffolk's
churches were, in almost every case,
beautified again.
At the heart of this Victorian vision, at
a time when the Industrial Revolution had
turned the world upside down in both
cities and the countryside, was a
restoration of tradition. Until this
point, the Church of England had
emphasised the break that had happened at
the Reformation in the mid-16th Century.
Indeed, it defined the very nature of
Anglicanism as a Reformed Church freed
from idolatry and superstition. The 16th
Century Reformation in England (and
particularly in East Anglia) was a
violent, traumatic and destructive event,
far more so than the excesses of the
likes of the iconoclast William Dowsing
and the puritans of a century later. And
yet by the first decades of the 19th
Century a new idea was spreading through
the church like wildfire. The plan was to
restore the Catholicity of the Church of
England.
The spark that lit the flames was perhaps
the 1830s reform acts which fully
decriminalised Roman Catholicism in
England, and allowed the Catholic Church
to return to this country in some
triumph. What did this mean for
Anglicanism? The break with Rome had
stripped away corruption and papist
excesses, but did it also mean that the
Church of England was no longer an
Apostolic Church? Was the Church of
England now little more than just another
protestant sect in comparison with the
Catholic Church? In response, the
writings of the Oxford Movement
galvanised Anglicanism, declaring it a
National Church that derived its
authority from the very earliest of
Christian missionaries to these shores.
As a consequence, there was a renewal of
interest in liturgy, furnishings and
vestments, a new enthusiasm for saints
and sacraments, for piety and personal
devotions. The consequent reinvigoration
of the Church meant that the Reformation
was seen increasingly as, in fact, not a
fracture any longer, but as a necessary
evolution from the medieval Church to the
modern Church, an evolution which had
been, if not smooth exactly, then
certainly popular, part of a triumphalist
national story. This was the motivation
to heal the damage by restoring churches
to their pre-Reformation integrity, the
Camden Society explaining exactly how
this might be done.
This affects our reading of any medieval
church, since the past has been tinkered
with. The world we see is not as we had
believed it to be. The completeness of
this revision, from the idea of a
fracturing Reformation to one of a smooth
transition, has become so firm that we
will find no shortage of those who decry
work of the Victorian restorers, for it
is easy to imagine that the Victorians
were altering perfectly good medieval
interiors. This is simply not the case.
The inside of churches had undergone
traumatic and radical alterations
throughout the period from the 1540s to
the1840s. In addition, many rural parish
churches had suffered considerable
neglect. A large minority (perhaps, in
Suffolk, a small majority) of churches
had by the early years of the 19th
Century fallen into a poor state of
repair, a problem made worse by the
moribund state of the Church of England
in East Anglia. In many places, very few
people attended the parish church on a
Sunday, preferring the enthusiasms of the
non-conformist chapels, especially in the
towns. The 19th Century revival not only
renewed the church buildings, it revived
the Church of England itself.
3. The Golden Age.
The great period of prosperity in Suffolk
was the that of the 15th and early 16th
Centuries. This is when the grandest
Suffolk churches were rebuilt. Because of
this, Suffolk's finest churches are
Perpendicular in style. In the south of
Suffolk are the great wool churches,
although more properly these should be
called cloth churches, since it was the
manufacture of cloth that created the
wealth to pay for them. There are
also the great churches of the coast,
built on the wealth of the ports that
exported Suffolk cloth. To travel up the
River Brett from Hadleigh through Kersey
and Lindsey to Lavenham, or up the River
Stour from Sudbury through Long Melford
and Cavendish to Clare, is to journey
through the industrial heartland of
medieval Suffolk. The churches along the
way reflect the great wealth generated at
that time. Similarly, you can diverge
eastwards off of the A12 Ipswich to
Lowestoft road every few miles, and end
up at a spectacular Perpendicular church,
none more so perhaps than Holy Trinity at
Blythburgh, which is right on the road.
No admirer of large, triumphal churches
would want to miss Framlingham, Lavenham,
Long Melford, Eye, Southwold, Stoke by
Nayland, Orford, and many others,
although of course there are other
smaller churches which are equally fine
and equally rewarding.
4. The age-old heart
of the community.
The churches were built primarily for the
Catholic Church to administer word and
sacrament to the people of the parish,
but even more so they were used for the
private devotions of the people, and for
a liturgy that involved processions,
shrines and other physical manifestations
of worship. And this was a time when
popular religion was much more social
than it is now, there was no stark
contrast between the communitarianism of
medieval Catholicism, and the regular
expression of social relationships. What
else were the churches used for? They
were virtually the only substantial
buildings outside of the main towns, and
they were spacious inside. So, we can
assume that the naves were used for
meetings and entertainments, for
celebrations, and for the regular
business of the village. They were
perhaps also used for storage, and even
as defence in times of danger, although
by the time Suffolk's greatest churches
were built this would have been a thing
of the past. However, we must always
assume that any church is built on the
site of an older one, since this so often
proves to be the case.
5. The early medieval period.
Going back before the Golden Age of
church-building, Suffolk has about forty
of England's one hundred and twenty-odd
round towers. All but ten of the rest are
in Norfolk. Why were they built? Some
have argued that they were originally
defensive towers, and, indeed, in many
cases they are older than the body of the
church that stands against them. But this
is true of some square towers too, and
only one of the round towers in Suffolk
stands alone. To look up at the great
round tower of Wortham church is to see
that some defensive purpose must have
been intended there. But that cannot have
been the case for the majority. Other
people have argued that they were lookout
towers, or beacons, although surely that
would be true of any high point? There is
not an easy source of building stone in
East Anglia, and it's been suggested that
this is the reason for building round
towers, so you didn't need to form
corners. But I'm not sure it would be any
easier to build the towers round, and the
main motivation for building round towers
was probably one of fashion. They exist
across the North Sea in Holland and
Germany too, though they are curiously
absent from much of the rest of England.
Round towers continued to be built in
East Anglia into the 12th and even 13th
Centuries, and probably there were once
many more of them that have since been
rebuilt square in the fashion of the
later medieval period. It's surely no
coincidence that the greatest
concentration of surviving round towers
is in north-east Suffolk and south-east
Norfolk, an area where there was not the
same degree of late medieval wealth as in
the rest of East Anglia.
Suffolk also had one of the
great Norman abbeys, at Bury St Edmunds.
The ruins are haunting despite their
setting in a municipal park, and to visit
cathedrals over the border in Ely and
Norwich is to imagine what might have
been here. Despite the wealth of the late
medieval period, there are still some
good small-scale Norman survivals, again,
mostly in out of the way places like
Wissington and Thornham Parva. Going
still further back, there are the ruins
of South Elmham Minster, hidden in the
woods and still barely understood.
6. The Reformation and after.
What happened at the Reformation in
Suffolk? The first great state-sponsored
wave of iconoclasm in the late
1530s/early 1540s seems to have been
focused largely on popular manifestations
of the cult of the dead, especially after
the suppression of chantries, and on
popular representations of the efficacy
of pilgrimages and intercessions. These
included statues of Mary and the saints
(nearly all of which disappeared very
early), so-called Doom paintings and
other large scale representations of
intercession (for instance, Mary tipping
the balance of the scales at Cowlinge,
which fortunately was whitewashed) and
saints on the parclose screens of chantry
chapels. Unlike the roods and rood lofts
above them, rood screens were usually
retained, unless the local reformers were
very enthusiastic, and later on their
retention was required by law under
Elizabeth I. The saints on the
roodscreens were usually painted over or
had their faces scratched out as a
salutary warning.
Suffolk's most famous image, that of Our
Lady of Grace at Ipswich, was supposedly
taken to Chelsea along with other famous
images of Our Lady (Walsingham,
Northampton, etc) and publicly burned.
However, there is some evidence that
images stripped from churches in the
1530s and 1540s (a hundred years before
Government Visitor William Dowsing came
wrecking interiors) were actually sold
abroad, since the accumulation of wealth
seems to have been as important as any
ideological motive. There's a fairly
convincing case that the image of Mary in
the church at Nettuno in Italy is
that of Our Lady of Ipswich.
What survived this Reformation
iconoclasm? For very practical reasons,
much stained glass would have survived,
simply because of the expense of
replacing it with plain glass. William
Dowsing, the itinerant 17th Century
iconoclast, regularly records in his
journal images in glass that he earmarked
for destruction. Bench ends and fonts
which had representations of the Catholic
sacraments and teachings survive today,
and must have been retained for practical
reasons, and indeed Dowsing vented his
furious cold logic on some of these as
well, but not often. This suggests that
they had in many cases been covered, the
fonts plastered over and the benches
boxed in. Paintings were usually
whitewashed, since this was the simplest
way of removing them. Even if Dowsing had
visited Wenhaston, he would not have seen
the Wenhaston Doom for it had been hidden
for a hundred years by the time he cut
his swathe across the county. More
intellectual, less graspable aspects of
Catholic theology also survived by being
covered or pressed into new uses -
piscinas, aumbries, sedilia and so on.
More practically, images in difficult to
reach places (roofs, external turrets,
etc) also survived the 16th Century
onslaught.
A hundred years later, William Dowsing's
mission was essentially one of advising
parishes on how to 'purify' their
churches. Although this included dealing
with surviving medieval imagery, it was
mostly aimed at the recent reforms of
Archbishop Laud which had required
churches to return the altar to the
chancel, to raise it up on steps and to
enclose it behind rails. This was
considered idolatrous by the puritans,
and Dowsing's journal records dozens of
occasions when he required parishes to
remove rails and steps to the altar. He
was also insistent that the Catholic
prayer clauses of inscriptions be
removed, especially in brass. Orate
pro anima (pray for the soul of) was
regularly crudely excised, leaving the
rest of the inscription intact. He
demanded that churchwardens climb into
and onto roofs to remove the hard of
access images that had survived the
Reformation of a century earlier.
It is important for to remember that
puritanism in East Anglia was popular. It
was unusual for Dowsing to encounter any
resistance. In the main, churchwardens
would have welcomed his visits, since it
ensured they were conforming with the
Ordinances against Idolatry and
Superstition of 1643 and 1644, and so did
not risk being fined. Dowsing charged a
noble for his advice, which was six
shillings and eightpence. He would often
reduce this by half if he felt the parish
had already made an honest effort. In
comparison, the fine for not conforming
with the ordinances was twenty shillings,
and there was no limit to how often it
could be applied. And of course, just as
at the Reformation, there would have been
plenty of local yobs waiting with ladders
and hammers, ready to join in. The Souldiers
Catechisme, issued to the New Model
Army in 1644, suggests that nothing
ought to be done in a tumultuous manner.
But seeing God hath put the sword of
reformation into the soldiers hand, I
think it is not amiss that they should
cancel and demolish those monuments of
superstition and idolatry, especially
seeing the magistrate and the minister
that should have done it formerly
neglected it. Dowsing is vilified so
strongly today because he kept careful
notes on his work in his journal, that's
all. And of course in the main the
puritans carried out their acts of
destruction from religious conviction,
whereas many of their predecessors at the
Reformation of a century earlier saw it
as an opportunity for profit (melting
down images, selling them, etc) or for
the sheer thrill of destruction. There
are surviving accounts of roving gangs of
hooligans destroying the furnishings of
churches in London in the 1540s, and the
same thing probably happened in Ipswich,
and was little more than state-sanctioned
drunken vandalism.
7. New beginnings, new
traditions.
Suffolk has few Victorian Anglican
churches outside of the towns, for the
obvious and simple reason that it didn't
need them. There are however some
excellent 19th Century Catholic churches
at Lowestoft, Bungay and Beccles, at St
Pancras in Ipswich and St Edmund in Bury
St Edmunds. Leiston has the finest
Victorian Anglican parish church, the
work of Edward Lamb, and Ipswich has the
grandest in Richard Phipson's St Mary le
Tower. Other major new churches included
St John at Bury St Edmunds, St John the
Baptist in Felixstowe, and St John at
Lowestoft, the last of these since
demolished. In the countryside, Flixton
St Mary is probably the most interesting.
Of course, as already discussed, churches
in Suffolk were restored extensively,
although not so much in poorer rural
areas, and a few of of these restorations
are very fine indeed. Barsham and Kelsale
spring to mind, along with Mildred
Holland's extravaganza at Huntingfield.
Even fewer new churches were built in
Suffolk in the 20th Century, and of
these, few are interesting. Felixstowe
has the most exciting Anglican church of
the century in St Andrew, the 1932 of
Raymond Erith and Hilda Mason, and the
first pre-cast concrete church in
Britain. All Hallows of 1938 in Ipswich
is Munro Cautley's finest hour, a church
entirely in the Art Deco style, largely
surviving in its original
incarnation. There are many 20th
century Catholic churches in Suffolk,
although none of the post-war ones are as
interesting as that at Aldeburgh of about
1910, which had a round tower which was
lost to bomb damage, and Kesgrave, of
1930 and later, which is notable for its
large range of stained glass windows by
Margaret Agnes Rope and her cousin
Margaret Edith Rope. Perhaps the best
post-war churches in Suffolk are not
Anglican or Catholic at all, but Castle
Hill Congregational Church (now URC) in
Ipswich, and Trinity Methodist Church in
Lowestoft.
8. The Way We Live Now.
Most of Suffolk's medieval churches are
in the care of the Church of England, and
in general it has been a good custodian,
despite some blips. About a dozen
under-used medieval churches were sold
off in the 1970s with some awful results,
particularly at Mickfield and Claydon,
although both were later rescued. Some
were converted into homes, others fell
more happily into the hands of local and
national trusts. But there are too
many churches for the CofE to reasonably
use, and about one in ten medieval
Suffolk churches (and almost half of
those in Ipswich) are now no longer used
for public worship. It is quite
unreasonable, too, for local communities
to be expected to pay for the upkeep of
these churches. Suffolk has a dozen or
more churches that in many other counties
would be the finest. Some of these are in
tiny villages. The Church of England has
tried to ensure the proper pastoral care
of its parishioners by gathering its
parishes together into benefices, each
under the care of one minister or
pastoral team. Some of these benefices
are large. And already there are
benefices that tire
of church-hopping every Sunday, and
not unreasonably would prefer to settle
in a single building. This will be
accelerated as individual congregations
shrink, and they are shrinking faster in
some parts of Suffolk than on average,
because of the age of the members of some
congregations.
What, then, is to happen to
all our historic churches? There are
reasons for optimism. We are already
going back to a time when village
churches had more uses than simply for
worship. An increasing number of churches
have installed kitchens and toilets,
allowing them to be used for concerts and
other performances, or as arts and
exhibition spaces. And intriguingly they
might also be used by other faith
communities. Suffolk's growing Catholic
population is already holding some of its
Saturday evening masses in Anglican
parish churches. The Methodist
communities in some villages also use the
parish church now. And yet, it is hard to
see how this will be enough. We all agree
that these buildings need to be
preserved, but not on who is to pay for
this to happen. The Suffolk Historic
Churches Trust and the Churches
Conservation Trust do excellent work. But
can posterity be guaranteed by charity?
For already, there are churches in
danger, because there simply isn't enough
money to go round. This demand will
increase as Victorian restorations reach
the natural end of their structural life.
Meanwhile, the Church of England, their
main custodian, enters a period of
transition, conscious that many of its
buildings are a drain on its resources.
It will be interesting to see what the
next quarter of a century brings.
Simon Knott,
Suffolk, 2022
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