St James, Nayland, Suffolk

St James, Nayland, Suffolk

St James, Nayland, Suffolk

Nayland. All villages all over seem to be by or next to Nayland. Very best go to Nayland to see what it was like.

I had programmed the sat nav to get me to Wissington, a lot more of that next, but I noticed that we would go as a result of Nayland, I decided to turn up the key highway by way of the village and discover a area to park.

Nayland is quite as a image, it’s possible even chocolate box very. But it is familiar with it. Nayland, twinned with Aldburgh!

The streets have been comprehensive of sporting activities autos and top stop assortment rovers. Pubs experienced been converted to houses, which happens everywhere, but it gave off, at minimum to me, an air of remaining improved. Superior than me.

I glimpsed St James alongside the line of Church Mews. I walked along to the church, observed that the entrance was spherical the other side of the church, but it was effortless to cut by means of a metal gate and made my way inside of.

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Most recently, I visited St James as element of the anniversary celebrations – of a different church. I’ll demonstrate why in a second, but an observation to start with: I like St James a good deal. I like Nayland much too – Suffolk has significantly less chocolate box villages than you could be led to assume, but Nayland is one particular of them.

The church is shoehorned into a restricted website among homes that are approximately as previous only to the north is there area for the graveyard to expand. Simply because of this, you might be tempted to see it only from this aspect but this would be a error, for while it is grand plenty of, it is most likely the least fascinating of the 4 sides. At any church, a wander all over the outdoors is recommended. In this article, it is critical.

As I say, I came right here past for the reason that of celebrations It was the centenary of the very little building on the north-east edge of St James’s churchyard. This is the Catholic church of the Sacred Coronary heart. Prior to the Reformation, of class, St James itself was a Catholic church but Henry VIII and two of his little ones threw the Priests out of the Temple, and now Nayland’s Catholics depart their Mass below the shadow of the glory that was the moment theirs. Sacred Coronary heart is a very small small church, and St James is large but as so typically these times, it is Sacred Heart that has the greater congregation. So it was that the centenary Mass was held in the major sister church. It need to have been quite a few yrs given that St James hosted a superior pontifical Mass, but it appeared very at ease with it.

I have many explanations for especially liking St James. For starters, he is my favorite Saint, and his church right here is a glory to him it is furnished in the Anglo-catholic manner 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 obtain in other massive Suffolk Anglican churches like Lavenham and Clare. Here, the experience is of a rural church at ease with itself, not the proto-urbanity that arrives with Minton tiles and polished woodwork.

Acquiring said that, the operate listed here is of a substantial excellent, and quite well-cared for. Quite frankly, I believe this church is a credit to its village and parish.

But permit us survey the outside the house to start with. St James was a 15th century cloth church, rebuilt on the wealth of the cloth traders. You step down into the seriously civic south porch, or continue on anti-clockwise to the west tower, at the rear of the properties, in which the west doorway has four steps – up. Most curious. The tower was by no means rebuilt it is nonetheless the initial 14th century just one, and the late-medieval battlements are, in simple fact, Victorian.

Carrying on southwards, we arrive to a 3rd entrance, and the grandest. William Abell’s porch was provided as portion of a bequest on the eve of the Reformation. Somewhat curiously, it faces westwards at the conclude of the south aisle, and is no for a longer period in regular use.

A slim path sales opportunities up the south facet of the church, with a wall and gardens outside of. It takes us past a grand purple brick rood loft stair turret, an indicator that the screen went correct the way throughout the church as at Blythburgh, Southwold, Lowestoft St Margaret and other grand churches of the similar date.

The eastend is like a tiny town of chancel and chapel, which include various primary doors. Then, you are back round into the open up churchyard.

We step in, then, through the north porch. The nave is instantly reminiscent of that at Framlingham, with the organ high in its gallery, the properly recut font in the north-west corner, and stable pillars major to a daring clerestory. The aisles distribute over and above the arcades, and stop in fine modern-day chapels that in the north aisle is particularly appealing. The roof is reminiscent of Blythburgh in its camber, but is fully devoid now of angels and monograms.

The chancel is large and grand, and if the stone reredos is a minor severe then this is sufficiently compensated for by John Constable’s very best altar piece. I am assuming that there is now a replica in put, as at Brantham. Christ blesses the bread and wine with a haunting expression on his confront you surprise what Constable may well have done if he hadn’t realized accomplishment as a landscape painter.

If you can get obtain to the vestry, you will come across the memorial to William Jones, vicar for the previous quarter of the 18th century. His position in fashionable Anglican history is protected and undeniable, and nevertheless his name is just about totally forgotten. At a time when the Church of England was just about solely the preserve of a boorish squirarchy, he led a team of intellectuals who explored the spiritual mother nature of the church, and tried to reintroduce tips to their parishioners like the genuine existence in the Eucharist. He designed his mark felt in lots of corners of the English Church. Just one of his early followers was John Wesley, who launched the Methodist motion. Yet another was the father of John Keble, who went on to be the inspiration behind the Oxford Motion. But one more human being inspired by the legacy of his non secular writings was the youthful John Henry Newman. It appears incredible that the catalyst behind the two good breakaway movements of the last 250 years really should have been a quiet clergyman in this Suffolk backwater, although in the late 18th and early 19th century the identify ‘Jones of Nayland’ was very well-regarded.

For brass-hunters, there is considerably to see – there are 6, all told, to the Sekyn, Hacche and Davy family members. There is also some really great fashionable glass, significantly in the north aisle.

Why is this grand church not on the ecclesiological tourist circuit? Effectively, it is all a bit Victorianised, I suppose. But as on the outside the house, there are some medieval survivals inside, and the most exceptional of these are hanging up on the south aisle wall. These are the panels of the medieval roodscreen (the frame and boarding is all Victorian) and show eight figures. The first exhibits St Cuthbert – the football in his hand is in actuality a head the 2nd and 3rd are two well-known Saints in East Anglia, our personal St Edmund and the Papal St Gregory (you can notify that the furious Anglican reformers failed to like him). The fourth is a King, the fifth demonstrates the legend of St Edward the Confessor (you can see this in stone at Wordwell) the upcoming two are Kings, and the very last is likely St Thomas of Canterbury.

I’m assuming that the monitor need to have been in situ until finally the Victorian restoration.

If you can get permission to climb to the organ loft, then the look at of the church from there is excellent, and particularly that of the roof and clerestory.

Don’t depart with no examining the funeral bier in the south aisle it is one of Suffolk’s major, and clearly made for grand processions for civic worthies. It is a reminder that, as late as the 19th century, Nayland was a substantial location, just before the 2nd industrial revolution pale it into obscurity.

www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/nayland.htm

Posted by Jelltex on 2014-10-23 05:56:51

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

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