St Mary, Witnesham

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

On an earlier version of the page for this church I bemoaned the Church of England's Great Covid Panic of 2020, when it hastily decided to close all its churches, without perhaps thinking through the consequences of its actions. Of course, it might well be that the worst pandemic for several generations would not have been a time when lots of people might have been grateful for the chance to sit in a church and talk to God about it. Some churches enthusiastically advertised their on-line presence, as if this was the evangelistic opportunity they had been waiting for, but for those of us who are not members of any particular congregation but who visit churches for a variety of other reasons, perhaps wondering at the powerful sense of the numinous that a visit to a church can inspire, or bringing a great grief or worry before God, streamed internet services and zoom prayer meetings would never be a sufficient substitute. Most of Suffolk's country churches are open all day, every day, under normal circumstances, and it must have caused churchwardens and their local communities great sadness to be told to close their churches against the people of God (the several that I know of in Suffolk who refused to do so have great riches in store). But it probably didn't worry the congregation at Witnesham too much, because over a number of visits in the last quarter of a century I have never found it open.

Approaching from the lane through the churchyard gate, the prospect is a little stark. The rendered north wall of the nave has an impressive clerestory, but there is no aisle beneath it. The shed-like 1870s vestry clings to the side of the chancel. Simon Cotton's Building The Late Medieval Suffolk Parish Church records a will of 1459 for a vestry next to the chancel which the current one replaced. And then in 1516 John Meadow added 20 shillings (about a thousand pounds in today's money) to the reparation of the building up of Wyttnesham church with the 40d that my wife gave at her departing. This must refer to the raising of the clerestory. Coming around to the south side the churchyard opens out, and the 15th Century south aisle tucked against one of East Anglia's 30-odd south towers is much more attractive. As with the clerestory, it was added to a church which was largely complete by the early years of the 14th Century. The setting is delicious, especially in early spring, the churchyard burgeoning with snowdrops and aconites, alive with birdsong in the still unfamiliar sunshine. It was on such a day in early 2025 that I came back to Witnesham. The churchwarden who let me in through the vestry was patient and knowledgeable, as they so often are. We stepped through into the chancel, the light of the wide nave beyond.

What strikes you first inside is quite how well-maintained the building is, everything crisp and clean. What you see today is largely the result of an early restoration in the 1840s by the Ipswich workshop of Henry Ringham, and then a major restoration in the early years of the 21st Century. This was successfully sympathetic to both the medieval origins of the building and to its 19th Century reimagining, with a number of survivals still from the years in between. At the west end of the nave, several rooms have been created, tucked in behind the font. This is clearly one of the familiar 15th Century East Anglian series, with alternating shields and angels holding shields on the bowl and lions on the stem, but it has been entirely and deeply recut, presumably by Ringham. It's set in a floor of pamments, the most westerly benches pleasingly splayed to create an open space by it. Looking east through Ringham's benches, the pulpit is a 17th Century survival, the royal arms above the chancel arch those of Queen Anne. The chancel beyond has a raised wooden floor. There are a surprising number of memorials lining the nave and chancel walls, which a later 19th Century restoration might have relegated to the west end of the nave. Perhaps most memorable is that to Lieutenant Charles King, wounded severely and taken prisoner in the battle near Fort Detroit November 28th 1812... he languished and was buried at Niagara with military honours. There are other memorials to members of the King and Meadows families.

The sanctuary in the chancel is a perfectly preserved 19th Century moment. James Bettley, revising the East Suffolk volume of the Buildings of England series, tells us that the glass is by Edward Baillie in the 1840s, the reredos by Robert Ireland of Ipswich, 1868. A glass partition separates the south aisle from the rest of the nave. Entering it is to step back in time, the cool white walls and triple lancet of the east window suggest what so many churches must have been like in the years after the Reformation. Intriguingly, Simon Cotton records a bequest of 1557, a pivotal moment in Reformation history, by Thomas Pynder, priest, who gave to the church a white silk vestment, adding I doo forgive to the church the money which I am owing for a chalice. Back in the nave, a number of surviving 17th Century texts painted onto the walls seem oddly out of place. Those responsible for them would be most surprised to see this church as it is now, the accretion of the centuries and its passing liturgical fashions, without any of them dominating overwhelmingly.

Fans of cult 1970s British films might recognise this church and its churchyard from David Gladwell's extraordinary Requiem For A Village (1975), probably the strangest film ever made about Suffolk. Gladwell had worked as editor on Lindsay Anderson's equally surreal If... and in his Witnesham film he added a further overlay of folk horror. The film opens on the recently built Chantry housing estate in Ipswich, and an old man who cycles out on the busy roads until he reaches the peace of Witnesham churchyard to tend what we presume is his wife's grave. Witnesham's involvement in the film seems to have been a result of the cinematic enthusiasms of the owners of Witnesham Hall, and many villagers were employed as extras, including in the film's most memorable scene, the dead rising from their graves around the old man. They go into the church, he follows them, and as he steps through the door he becomes young again, for it is his wedding day. As with its near Suffolk contemporary, Peter Hall's Akenfield (1974), its main theme is of an old order passing away as the countryside succumbs to the modern world, but unlike Hall's gentle film, the changes in Gladwell's Suffolk are often meaninglessly destructive and shockingly violent. A curiosity is that the scenes inside the church were not filmed at Witnesham at all, but at Linstead Parva.

This area of Suffolk was a hotbed of dissent in the mid-19th Century, especially so close to Ipswich that villagers could attend one of the many chapels there. At the time of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, William Potter, the Rector of Witnesham, recorded an attendance that Sunday morning of 65 parishioners, slightly more than a tenth of the population of the parish. As usual, there were many more in attendance for the afternoon sermon, for protestant-minded rural East Anglians generally far prefered a robust sermon to any form of ceremonial worship. Even so, Potter felt the need to justify the low attendance, pointing out that the parish extends nearly two miles each way north and south from the parish church (this was a gross exaggeration) and many parishioners are a considerable distance and cannot attend more than once a day... attendance is also affected by the weather. One of the intentions of the 1851 Census was to see if incumbents were giving value for money. The Reverend Potter received £690 annually, roughly £90,000 in today's money, so it may well be that he was moved to justify his income, as many other Church of England incumbents did that day. However, in Suffolk the Anglican revival of the 19th Century was only just beginning.