St Mary, Ixworth, Suffolk
Coming again to Ixworth after virtually twenty many years away, I discovered that I couldn’t recall where by the church was. Getting much too lazy to get out my map, and not stupid adequate to use a satnav, I cycled up the extended hill of that remarkably great significant street right until I attained the fireplace station at the leading, and then I was back again in open up country. Eventually examining the map, I discovered that the church was at the bottom of the hill. Still, it did not just take very long to get again there.
Ixworth is 1 of those people small cities, or big villages, that Suffolk looks to do so nicely. The Bury St Edmunds to Diss and Stowmarket to Thetford streets cross in this article, but both of those are now carried earlier the village on bypasses, and so Ixworth has the pleasurable air of a fairly remote and self-enough place, with a shop, a publish-office environment, a pair of good pubs, and that pre-requisite of modern rural civilisation, a ladies’ hairdresser. There’s a super tiny h2o mill on the street to Pakenham, basically in Pakenham parish but nearer to right here. Ixworth is not to be perplexed with Ixworth Thorpe, a small hamlet a mile or two to the north, with a stunning tiny thatched church, and especially not with Ickworth, residence of the Marquis of Bristol, some 10 miles to the south-west.
As I say, the church is promptly beside the High Street, but as it is concealed from it by a row of shops and houses I felt vindicated for biking past it without the need of noticing. A small driveway sales opportunities into a small churchyard, out of which rises a really large church, evidently all created on the eve of the Reformation. This is very substantially the case, given that the late 15th and early 16th century replaced everything other than the porch and the chancel. There are even dates for the completion of the tower. That other good age of faith, the late 19th century, replaced the chancel. All items of the ensemble are rather usual of their ages.
Look west of the church, and you can see the site of the previous Ixworth Priory. Most of this has now absent, but the vaulted undercroft has been retained as component of the current household on the site. There are a lot more ruins seen from the Large Avenue even further west.
You phase into the come to feel of a comprehensively city church, as at Yoxford. This is partly a final result of the rather mediocre 1855 restoration, with its sombre benches, but is also to do with the dimensions of St Mary, and its major east window. With the aisles, the nave feels as large as it is long. Towards the west, the space beneath the tower has been converted into a meeting room, all concluded fairly effectively in the early 1980s way. I was happy that I experienced Sam Mortlock’s reserve with me, due to the fact he told me about something instead intriguing I’d uncover inside of the assembly space, if I experienced been in a position to get in (it was locked). Many of the dedicatory tiles that had been set in the buttresses of the newly-completed tower in the 16th century have been reset below.
Just one of them is to a community person referred to as Thome Vyal. I could just make it out as a result of the glass door. Mortlock tells us that his will was proved in 1472, and he gave 4 lbs . to the steeple. The exciting matter about it is that we know Vyal was a carpenter, so he possibly worked in this church, where by no woodwork of the time period survives, but probably also at close by Ixworth Thorpe, exactly where substantially does. In addition, several of the church buildings spherical about here are well known for their bench finishes. Even additional intriguing is the simple fact that the font below plainly consists of carpentry equipment among the symbols on the shields. Perhaps this suggests that Ixworth was once a centre of excellence for woodcarving, and a single wonders what we may possibly have discovered here ahead of the Victorian restoration.
The sombreness of the nave is barely enlightened by the clerestory, and isn’t really served by many large memorials all-around the north doorway. But the girl chapel at the end of the north aisle is rather sweet. In medieval instances, it was the chapel of the guild of St James, states Mortlock. In any scenario, there is a great deal of evidence of the fast paced daily life of the parish, so the gloom isn’t going to weigh you down way too substantially.
The base of the roodscreen survives, and you step up by way of it into the 19th century chancel. Now, this is seriously major – the excellent east window positively frowns on you. Up in the sanctuary, the Victorians reset the perky tomb of Richard Coddington. Brasses of Coddington and his spouse are established in just a semi-circular aid, and the tomb upper body beneath glows with heraldry.
Coddington was not from Suffolk at all, and could in no way have envisioned to stop up buried in this article. Nevertheless, when the monasteries have been suppressed in the 1530s, Henry VIII offered the estate and lands of Ixworth Priory to Coddington in trade for the village he owned in the vicinity of Ewell in Surrey. This was great organization for Coddington, but unfortunate for the villagers of the little settlement of Cuddington, due to the fact Henry had their houses and church erased from the map. In their put, he developed the massive pile of Nonesuch Palace, the most significant, grandest and most hugely decorated solitary design in England in the course of the class of the 16th century. It was furnished with all the good riches that continental Europe had to offer. It was surrounded by an awesome park, woodlands and rides. I suppose that it is good to know that the irreplaceable treasures of the English medieval church weren’t all frittered away on pointless and fruitless sieges of French coastal cities.
Nonesuch Palace no for a longer period exists. When the English royal household could no extended preserve alone in the manner to which it had develop into accustomed, the household was demolished for setting up components. This would seem to have taken a significant time, for destruction began in the 1680s, but at least one particular of the towers was even now standing in the early 18th century. Oliver Cromwell himself had overseen the promoting off of the contents for the duration of the Commonwealth, and his parliament experienced ordered the slicing down of most of the trees for shipbuilding. Barely a memory survives currently.
But Richard Coddington lies below, in all probability nonetheless experience quietly pleased with himself.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-02-12 09:09:12
Tagged: , ixworth , suffolk , east anglia
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