St James, Nayland, Suffolk

St James, Nayland, Suffolk

St James, Nayland, Suffolk

Nayland. All villages all over seem to be by or upcoming to Nayland. Most effective go to Nayland to see what it was like.

I experienced programmed the sat nav to get me to Wissington, extra of that next, but I saw that we would go by means of Nayland, I decided to turn up the principal road by way of the village and come across a area to park.

Nayland is very as a photo, perhaps even chocolate box very. But it knows it. Nayland, twinned with Aldburgh!

The streets had been whole of sporting activities automobiles and prime conclusion range rovers. Pubs had been converted to properties, which transpires in all places, but it gave off, at the very least to me, an air of getting superior. Greater than me.

I glimpsed St James alongside the line of Church Mews. I walked along to the church, identified that the entrance was round the other aspect of the church, but it was effortless to cut by means of a steel gate and produced my way inside of.

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Most not long ago, I frequented St James as section of the anniversary celebrations – of yet another church. I’ll reveal why in a instant, but an observation first: I like St James a lot. I like Nayland too – Suffolk has considerably less chocolate box villages than you may possibly be led to anticipate, but Nayland is 1 of them.

The church is shoehorned into a limited website among the residences that are approximately as outdated only to the north is there room for the graveyard to expand. Since of this, you may be tempted to perspective it only from this aspect but this would be a slip-up, for although it is grand sufficient, it is almost certainly the least attention-grabbing of the 4 sides. At any church, a stroll about the outside the house is suggested. In this article, it is essential.

As I say, I arrived listed here final mainly because of celebrations It was the centenary of the minimal making on the north-east edge of St James’s churchyard. This is the Catholic church of the Sacred Coronary heart. Just before the Reformation, of class, St James itself was a Catholic church but Henry VIII and two of his kids threw the Monks out of the Temple, and now Nayland’s Catholics leave their Mass less than the shadow of the glory that was when theirs. Sacred Coronary heart is a tiny very little church, and St James is huge but as so usually these days, it is Sacred Coronary heart that has the more substantial congregation. So it was that the centenary Mass was held in the significant sister church. It have to have been several yrs because St James hosted a higher pontifical Mass, but it seemed pretty snug with it.

I have many reasons for particularly liking St James. For starters, he is my favorite Saint, and his church here is a glory to him it is furnished in the Anglo-catholic way of the early 20th century, with Stations of the Cross established in the walls and a grand ritualist sanctuary. But it does not have the pomposity or the triumphalism you uncover in other substantial Suffolk Anglican church buildings like Lavenham and Clare. In this article, the emotion is of a rural church at simplicity with itself, not the proto-urbanity that will come with Minton tiles and polished woodwork.

Owning stated that, the operate here is of a higher excellent, and very properly-cared for. Pretty frankly, I consider this church is a credit to its village and parish.

But allow us survey the outdoors initial. St James was a 15th century fabric church, rebuilt on the wealth of the cloth traders. You action down into the severely civic south porch, or continue on anti-clockwise to the west tower, driving the properties, in which the west doorway has 4 actions – up. Most curious. The tower was in no way rebuilt it is nevertheless the authentic 14th century a person, and the late-medieval battlements are, in truth, Victorian.

Carrying on southwards, we come to a third entrance, and the grandest. William Abell’s porch was presented as aspect of a bequest on the eve of the Reformation. Alternatively curiously, it faces westwards at the close of the south aisle, and is no extended in common use.

A slim path prospects up the south side of the church, with a wall and gardens past. It usually takes us past a grand crimson brick rood loft stair turret, an indicator that the display went correct the way across the church as at Blythburgh, Southwold, Lowestoft St Margaret and other grand church buildings of the similar day.

The eastend is like a very little metropolis of chancel and chapel, which include a number of original doorways. Then, you are back again spherical into the open churchyard.

We step in, then, by means of the north porch. The nave is straight away reminiscent of that at Framlingham, with the organ high in its gallery, the well recut font in the north-west corner, and good pillars foremost to a daring clerestory. The aisles spread further than the arcades, and stop in great contemporary chapels that in the north aisle is especially pleasing. The roof is reminiscent of Blythburgh in its camber, but is solely devoid now of angels and monograms.

The chancel is substantial and grand, and if the stone reredos is a small extreme then this is adequately compensated for by John Constable’s ideal altar piece. I am assuming that there is now a replica in area, as at Brantham. Christ blesses the bread and wine with a haunting expression on his face you speculate what Constable may well have finished if he hadn’t realized results as a landscape painter.

If you can get access to the vestry, you will locate the memorial to William Jones, vicar for the last quarter of the 18th century. His place in modern Anglican heritage is protected and plain, and yet his name is nearly solely neglected. At a time when the Church of England was practically completely the maintain of a boorish squirarchy, he led a team of intellectuals who explored the religious mother nature of the church, and tried to reintroduce strategies to their parishioners like the actual existence in the Eucharist. He produced his mark felt in lots of corners of the English Church. A single of his early followers was John Wesley, who established the Methodist movement. Yet another was the father of John Keble, who went on to be the inspiration behind the Oxford Movement. Nonetheless a different person impressed by the legacy of his religious writings was the youthful John Henry Newman. It would seem amazing that the catalyst behind the two terrific breakaway actions of the final 250 yrs should really have been a quiet clergyman in this Suffolk backwater, although in the late 18th and early 19th century the name ‘Jones of Nayland’ was nicely-recognised.

For brass-hunters, there is substantially to see – there are 6, all instructed, to the Sekyn, Hacche and Davy families. There is also some genuinely excellent contemporary glass, especially in the north aisle.

Why is this grand church not on the ecclesiological vacationer circuit? Well, it is all a bit Victorianised, I suppose. But as on the exterior, there are some medieval survivals inside of, and the most remarkable of these are hanging up on the south aisle wall. These are the panels of the medieval roodscreen (the body and boarding is all Victorian) and display 8 figures. The to start with reveals St Cuthbert – the soccer in his hand is in reality a head the second and third are two well-liked Saints in East Anglia, our possess St Edmund and the Papal St Gregory (you can tell that the furious Anglican reformers didn’t like him). The fourth is a King, the fifth exhibits the legend of St Edward the Confessor (you can see this in stone at Wordwell) the next two are Kings, and the last is most likely St Thomas of Canterbury.

I’m assuming that the screen must have been in situ till the Victorian restoration.

If you can get permission to climb to the organ loft, then the see of the church from there is wonderful, and significantly that of the roof and clerestory.

Never go away with no analyzing the funeral bier in the south aisle it is a single of Suffolk’s most significant, and of course created for grand processions for civic worthies. It is a reminder that, as late as the 19th century, Nayland was a considerable place, ahead of the 2nd industrial revolution light it into obscurity.

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/nayland.htm

Posted by Jelltex on 2014-10-22 19:58:04

Tagged: , St James , Nayland , church , jelltex , jelltecks , Suffolk

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