All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk
This village straggles the fast paced road between Woodbridge and Snape since the closure of the close by American airbase, it is a great deal quieter than it used to be, while when I came this way on a sub-zero day in January 2017 I was pleased to see that the village shop was continue to performing superior small business. Across the street, and set back again from it, All Saints sits quietly, with no tower to direct you to it from afar.
At very first sight, this is a basic, if uneven, minor church, rather barn-like in its historic graveyard. Tall elm trees close to it are household to jackdaws and rooks their cries fill the air as they wheel higher than you. A great yew caresses the south of the nave. The modern day little porch provides no indicator that you are about to enter one of the much more intriguing church buildings in this portion of Suffolk.
As you action down into the square south aisle and nave (in truth, they look broader than they are extended!) the 1st point you see is a pair of stunning Norman arches, 1 about 10 toes to the east of the other, at the foundation of what was after the central tower, whilst virtually no indication continues to be of it from the exterior now. Outside of them, the chancel opens up, its peak accentuating the lowness of the arches which direct into it.
Sam Mortlock argues that All Saints was in all probability a cruciform church as at Pakenham in west Suffolk, with the south chapel major off from the south-east corner of the nave getting up component of what was a south transept. Cautley thought of a tripartite arrangement more very likely, as at Newton-by-Castle-Acre in Norfolk, mostly on the energy of the arches only owning mouldings on the western facet. Just one of the decrease tower home windows can nonetheless be noticed on the japanese confront from inside the chancel, and appears most curious. A bell rope disappears up into the ceilure. Whilst the western arch only has one particular band of chevrons, the japanese arch has two. If you glimpse carefully at the nave roof immediately in entrance of the western arch, you can see traces of paint, evidence of a one-time canopy of honour to the now-vanished rood. There is a compact collection of medieval and continental glass in the chancel north window, like a superior good quality scene of St Bridget feeding the beggars, two jolly mermaids and what look to be the arms of the Borough of Terrific Yarmouth.
Edward Hakewill carried out the restoration right here in the 1860s. He is dependable for the angels on the wall plate of the nave. The south aisle is not really an aisle at all, a lot more a completion of the square among authentic nave and south transept. The south transept (if these types of it was) experienced been a chantry chapel, generally referred to as the Bavents Chantry. Lavers, Barraud & Westlake provided the glass for Hakewill’s west window, as nicely as a smaller sized lancet on the east facet of the south transept, but the woodwork in the church is alternatively additional latest, and an attention-grabbing story pertains to it.
Like various other Suffolk churches, such as Waldringfield across the estuary, a family members dynasty of vicars was responsible for the Anglican revival in this parish. These were being the Darlings, James pere et fils. They held this dwelling for 80 several years, concerning 1859 and 1939. The father oversaw Hakewill’s restoration of what had develop into a around-derelict church. The son, who took around in 1893, experienced a passion for woodcarving. He taught his parishioners the talent at evening courses in the village faculty. Between them, the villagers manufactured the benches, font cover, organ case, chapel display screen and reredos. If you seem at the bench ends, you will obtain James Darling’s pet canine, and some other not likely animals including a beaver, a snake, a squirrel and a penguin. A topped figure with a rosary on the poppyhead of just one bench almost certainly signifies the Blessed Virgin, and a seated cleric with a smile on his experience is almost certainly James Darling himself. The pulpit is Darling’s memorial. The workshop’s bench ends can be identified in fifty percent a dozen other east Suffolk church buildings.
The east window is a relatively sombre affair, also by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, displaying the youngsters coming to Christ although angels check out and demonstrate what Charity appears like. The parish’s most well-known treasure, the 15th century Eyke critical, is now in the British Museum. Its wards are formed to make the word IKE, an alternative type of the village identify. I was unhappy to find out that the doorlock has been adjusted given that, but I suppose retention of the unique would have built this the best of all churches to crack into. A fibre-glass copy hangs on the wall.
It pleases me to come back again in this article. It is now seventeen many years due to the fact my to start with check out, on New Year’s Working day 2000, I was the first human being of the century* to signal the visitors e-book, and it was pleasing to change back again to it on my return in 2006 and 2010. But I have still left it far too prolonged, and on my most new check out in 2017 I uncovered that a new visitor’s book had taken the area of the old a single. Ah well. Back again in 2000, the pleasant woman practising the organ had instructed me that a single of the Reverend Darling’s daughters was however alive, and at times frequented to see once again her father’s and grandfather’s handiwork. In 2010 I puzzled if she nonetheless did, but now some seventeen decades have passed, and I suppose she does not any far more.
*Yes, I know that pedants will notify you that the 21st Century started on New Many years Day 2001. You should not hear to them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-01-29 18:48:09
Tagged: , Eyke , East Anglia , suffolk , church , church buildings , nikon , d5300
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