All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk
This village straggles the fast paced street between Woodbridge and Snape because the closure of the close by American airbase, it is a great deal quieter than it made use of to be, although when I came this way on a sub-zero day in January 2017 I was pleased to see that the village shop was still executing excellent organization. Across the street, and established back again from it, All Saints sits quietly, with no tower to direct you to it from afar.
At initial sight, this is a very simple, if uneven, minor church, fairly barn-like in its ancient graveyard. Tall elm trees around it are residence to jackdaws and rooks their cries fill the air as they wheel over you. A good yew caresses the south of the nave. The contemporary very little porch provides no sign that you are about to enter a single of the extra exciting churches in this part of Suffolk.
As you stage down into the square south aisle and nave (in fact, they look wider than they are prolonged!) the to start with thing you notice is a pair of gorgeous Norman arches, just one about 10 feet to the east of the other, at the foundation of what was the moment the central tower, although virtually no sign remains of it from the outside now. Over and above them, the chancel opens up, its top accentuating the lowness of the arches which direct into it.
Sam Mortlock argues that All Saints was likely a cruciform church as at Pakenham in west Suffolk, with the south chapel top off from the south-east corner of the nave getting up aspect of what was a south transept. Cautley regarded as a tripartite arrangement extra very likely, as at Newton-by-Castle-Acre in Norfolk, mostly on the power of the arches only possessing mouldings on the western side. One of the lower tower windows can nevertheless be observed on the eastern confront from inside of the chancel, and appears to be like most curious. A bell rope disappears up into the ceilure. While the western arch only has just one band of chevrons, the jap arch has two. If you appear intently at the nave roof instantly in entrance of the western arch, you can see traces of paint, proof of a 1-time canopy of honour to the now-vanished rood. There is a tiny assortment of medieval and continental glass in the chancel north window, which includes a large excellent scene of St Bridget feeding the beggars, two jolly mermaids and what appear to be the arms of the Borough of Wonderful Yarmouth.
Edward Hakewill carried out the restoration below in the 1860s. He is dependable for the angels on the wall plate of the nave. The south aisle isn’t really genuinely an aisle at all, far more a completion of the square between unique nave and south transept. The south transept (if such it was) experienced been a chantry chapel, usually referred to as the Bavents Chantry. Lavers, Barraud & Westlake provided the glass for Hakewill’s west window, as perfectly as a scaled-down lancet on the east side of the south transept, but the woodwork in the church is fairly additional latest, and an appealing tale pertains to it.
Like various other Suffolk churches, like Waldringfield throughout the estuary, a household dynasty of vicars was liable for the Anglican revival in this parish. These were being the Darlings, James pere et fils. They held this residing for 80 a long time, amongst 1859 and 1939. The father oversaw Hakewill’s restoration of what experienced develop into a near-derelict church. The son, who took about in 1893, experienced a passion for woodcarving. He taught his parishioners the skill at evening classes in the village faculty. Concerning them, the villagers developed the benches, font include, organ case, chapel screen and reredos. If you appear at the bench ends, you will come across James Darling’s pet pet, and some other not likely animals which includes a beaver, a snake, a squirrel and a penguin. A topped figure with a rosary on the poppyhead of just one bench likely represents the Blessed Virgin, and a seated cleric with a smile on his facial area is almost certainly James Darling himself. The pulpit is Darling’s memorial. The workshop’s bench finishes can be located in half a dozen other east Suffolk church buildings.
The east window is a alternatively sombre affair, also by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, displaying the youngsters coming to Christ although angels check out and display what Charity looks like. The parish’s most well known treasure, the 15th century Eyke crucial, is now in the British Museum. Its wards are formed to make the phrase IKE, an substitute form of the village identify. I was disappointed to uncover that the doorlock has been changed because, but I suppose retention of the primary would have created this the most straightforward of all church buildings to crack into. A fibre-glass duplicate hangs on the wall.
It pleases me to arrive back right here. It is now seventeen a long time since my initially stop by, on New Year’s Day 2000, I was the very first person of the century* to sign the readers guide, and it was pleasing to change back again to it on my return in 2006 and 2010. But I have remaining it way too prolonged, and on my most latest visit in 2017 I observed that a new visitor’s reserve had taken the location of the old a person. Ah perfectly. Back in 2000, the wonderful woman practising the organ had informed me that a single of the Reverend Darling’s daughters was even now alive, and sometimes frequented to see once more her father’s and grandfather’s handiwork. In 2010 I questioned if she however did, but now some seventeen years have passed, and I suppose she does not any far more.
*Yes, I know that pedants will convey to you that the 21st Century began on New Years Day 2001. Never hear to them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-01-29 18:47:21
Tagged: , Eyke , East Anglia , suffolk , church , churches , nikon , d5300
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