All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk
This village straggles the occupied road concerning Woodbridge and Snape considering the fact that the closure of the nearby American airbase, it is significantly quieter than it utilised to be, however when I came this way on a sub-zero day in January 2017 I was happy to see that the village store was nevertheless carrying out excellent company. Throughout the highway, and set back again from it, All Saints sits quietly, with no tower to guide you to it from afar.
At very first sight, this is a basic, if uneven, minimal church, considerably barn-like in its ancient graveyard. Tall elm trees all over it are dwelling 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 fashionable little porch offers no indication that you are about to enter one particular of the more appealing churches in this component of Suffolk.
As you action down into the square south aisle and nave (in reality, they seem broader than they are extended!) the initial thing you recognize is a pair of beautiful Norman arches, a person about 10 feet to the east of the other, at the foundation of what was at the time the central tower, although virtually no sign continues to be of it from the exterior now. Further than them, the chancel opens up, its top accentuating the lowness of the arches which lead into it.
Sam Mortlock argues that All Saints was probably a cruciform church as at Pakenham in west Suffolk, with the south chapel major off from the south-east corner of the nave using up component of what was a south transept. Cautley viewed as a tripartite arrangement additional likely, as at Newton-by-Castle-Acre in Norfolk, mostly on the power of the arches only acquiring mouldings on the western side. One particular of the decreased tower windows can however be viewed on the jap experience from inside the chancel, and looks most curious. A bell rope disappears up into the ceilure. Although the western arch only has 1 band of chevrons, the japanese arch has two. If you glance carefully at the nave roof instantly in front of the western arch, you can see traces of paint, evidence of a just one-time cover of honour to the now-vanished rood. There is a little 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 look to be the arms of the Borough of Great Yarmouth.
Edward Hakewill carried out the restoration listed here in the 1860s. He is dependable for the angels on the wall plate of the nave. The south aisle isn’t really definitely an aisle at all, far more a completion of the sq. involving original nave and south transept. The south transept (if this kind of it was) had been a chantry chapel, usually referred to as the Bavents Chantry. Lavers, Barraud & Westlake equipped the glass for Hakewill’s west window, as very well as a scaled-down lancet on the east side of the south transept, but the woodwork in the church is fairly extra current, and an intriguing tale pertains to it.
Like a number of other Suffolk churches, which includes 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, amongst 1859 and 1939. The father oversaw Hakewill’s restoration of what had come to be a around-derelict church. The son, who took over in 1893, had a enthusiasm for woodcarving. He taught his parishioners the skill at evening lessons in the village university. Amongst them, the villagers developed the benches, font protect, organ scenario, chapel monitor and reredos. If you seem at the bench finishes, you will come across James Darling’s pet canine, and some other not likely animals together with a beaver, a snake, a squirrel and a penguin. A crowned figure with a rosary on the poppyhead of just one bench almost certainly 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 uncovered in 50 percent a dozen other east Suffolk churches.
The east window is a instead sombre affair, also by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, demonstrating the small children coming to Christ whilst angels test and exhibit what Charity appears to be like like. The parish’s most well known treasure, the 15th century Eyke vital, is now in the British Museum. Its wards are formed to make the term IKE, an choice kind of the village name. I was dissatisfied to find that the doorlock has been adjusted given that, but I suppose retention of the first would have made this the most straightforward of all churches to break into. A fibre-glass copy hangs on the wall.
It pleases me to appear back right here. It is now seventeen many years due to the fact my initially take a look at, on New Year’s Working day 2000, I was the very first individual of the century* to signal the readers e-book, and it was satisfying to switch back again to it on my return in 2006 and 2010. But I have still left it way too extensive, and on my most modern go to in 2017 I discovered that a new visitor’s reserve experienced taken the area of the outdated one particular. Ah well. Back in 2000, the good lady practising the organ had advised me that a person of the Reverend Darling’s daughters was however alive, and once in a while visited to see once again her father’s and grandfather’s handiwork. In 2010 I puzzled if she even now did, but now some seventeen years have handed, and I suppose she does not any a lot more.
*Yes, I know that pedants will explain to you that the 21st Century began on New Decades Day 2001. You should not pay attention to them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-01-29 18:35:42
Tagged: , Eyke , East Anglia , suffolk , church , church buildings , nikon , d5300
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