All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk
This village straggles the hectic road between Woodbridge and Snape given that the closure of the close by American airbase, it is a great deal quieter than it utilised to be, nevertheless when I came this way on a sub-zero working day in January 2017 I was happy to see that the village shop was still accomplishing good business. Across the street, and established back from it, All Saints sits quietly, with no tower to direct you to it from afar.
At very first sight, this is a straightforward, if uneven, minimal church, rather barn-like in its historical graveyard. Tall elm trees around it are house to jackdaws and rooks their cries fill the air as they wheel higher than you. A good yew caresses the south of the nave. The fashionable small porch provides no indication that you are about to enter a single of the extra exciting churches in this part of Suffolk.
As you move down into the sq. south aisle and nave (in fact, they surface broader than they are lengthy!) the initially issue you notice is a pair of lovely Norman arches, a single about 10 ft to the east of the other, at the foundation of what was once the central tower, although pretty much no indicator continues to be of it from the exterior now. Beyond them, the chancel opens up, its top accentuating the lowness of the arches which lead into it.
Sam Mortlock argues that All Saints was almost certainly a cruciform church as at Pakenham in west Suffolk, with the south chapel leading off from the south-east corner of the nave getting up component of what was a south transept. Cautley considered a tripartite arrangement much more probably, as at Newton-by-Castle-Acre in Norfolk, mainly on the power of the arches only getting mouldings on the western side. Just one of the reduced tower home windows can however be witnessed on the jap deal with from in just the chancel, and seems to be most curious. A bell rope disappears up into the ceilure. Even though the western arch only has a person band of chevrons, the japanese arch has two. If you look carefully at the nave roof straight away in entrance of the western arch, you can see traces of paint, proof of a a single-time canopy of honour to the now-vanished rood. There is a little selection of medieval and continental glass in the chancel north window, including a substantial quality scene of St Bridget feeding the beggars, two jolly mermaids and what appear to be the arms of the Borough of Good Yarmouth.
Edward Hakewill carried out the restoration below in the 1860s. He is liable for the angels on the wall plate of the nave. The south aisle is not genuinely an aisle at all, extra a completion of the sq. involving authentic nave and south transept. The south transept (if these types of it was) had been a chantry chapel, generally referred to as the Bavents Chantry. Lavers, Barraud & Westlake equipped the glass for Hakewill’s west window, as well as a smaller lancet on the east side of the south transept, but the woodwork in the church is fairly far more new, and an attention-grabbing tale pertains to it.
Like a number of other Suffolk churches, such as Waldringfield throughout the estuary, a relatives dynasty of vicars was responsible for the Anglican revival in this parish. These ended up the Darlings, James pere et fils. They held this residing for 80 several years, between 1859 and 1939. The father oversaw Hakewill’s restoration of what experienced grow to be a around-derelict church. The son, who took over in 1893, experienced a enthusiasm for woodcarving. He taught his parishioners the skill at evening classes in the village faculty. Between them, the villagers generated the benches, font include, organ circumstance, chapel display and reredos. If you look at the bench finishes, you will discover James Darling’s pet puppy, and some other not likely animals such as a beaver, a snake, a squirrel and a penguin. A crowned figure with a rosary on the poppyhead of 1 bench in all probability signifies the Blessed Virgin, and a seated cleric with a smile on his experience is most likely James Darling himself. The pulpit is Darling’s memorial. The workshop’s bench ends can be identified in 50 % a dozen other east Suffolk church buildings.
The east window is a relatively sombre affair, also by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, displaying the children coming to Christ though angels try and display what Charity appears like. The parish’s most renowned treasure, the 15th century Eyke important, is now in the British Museum. Its wards are formed to make the phrase IKE, an substitute type of the village identify. I was disappointed to find that the doorlock has been changed given that, but I suppose retention of the first would have designed this the easiest of all church buildings to break into. A fibre-glass duplicate hangs on the wall.
It pleases me to appear back again here. It is now seventeen decades due to the fact my first stop by, on New Year’s Working day 2000, I was the initial individual of the century* to sign the people guide, and it was pleasing to turn back again to it on my return in 2006 and 2010. But I have remaining it as well long, and on my most latest go to in 2017 I located that a new visitor’s guide had taken the location of the aged one. Ah very well. Back again in 2000, the good girl practising the organ had explained to me that one particular of the Reverend Darling’s daughters was continue to alive, and at times visited to see once again her father’s and grandfather’s handiwork. In 2010 I questioned if she nevertheless did, but now some seventeen years have passed, and I suppose she does not any much more.
*Certainly, I know that pedants will tell you that the 21st Century started on New Many years Day 2001. Don’t hear to them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-01-29 18:37:26
Tagged: , Eyke , East Anglia , suffolk , church , churches , nikon , d5300
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