St Mary’s church in Bures, a riverside village partly in Suffolk and partly in Essex, is a split town with the larger part on the Essex side called Bures Hamlet. The church itself is split into Bures St Mary and Bures Hamlet, named after the village they are located in. The church was initially dedicated to the feast of All Saints, however, in the 19th century Anglican revival, one of the results of the Oxford Movement was a renewed interest in church dedications, leading to a chapel in the churchyard being dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, leading to confusion about the original dedication of the church.
The church features a red brick early 16th-century south porch and Richard de Waldegrave’s tower, which was built in the late 14th century. The base of the tower is a survival of an earlier one, and on its southern side is a curious tomb recess, now empty. The church is described as quintessential Anglican church with 19th and 20th century reorderings typical of thousands of large, prosperous buildings.
However, there are several unusual things in this church worth seeing. The ceiling consists of flat, wooden patterns, with modern lighting units set into them credited to Ewan Christian, who carried out the 19th-century restoration. The lighting system is from the 1990s. The arcades are lit from beneath, creating the effect of an undercroft. Moreover, the church features a wooden effigy of a knight dating back to 1330, made of chestnut, which rests in peace on a north aisle window recess.
The most unusual feature of St Mary’s is a strange little octagonal segment that juts out about ten feet up on the eastern face of the south side of the chancel arch, which is a piscina. This chancel arch had a drain inside it, making this piscina rare, with most rood loft altars managing with a takeaway bowl. The location of the tomb with the children kneeling in prayer is perhaps a pity, as the location of the tomb takes away from the eastward view in the chapel, which is otherwise its triumph. The eastward view in the chapel is the five-light window containing a modern glass memorial to the Waldegraves, including the Catholic inscription that of our charity, we should pray for their souls.
The River Stour is the county border, and it flows not far from the western edge of the churchyard. In the corner of the churchyard, there is a parish war memorial that is unusual and possibly unique as it remembers the men of Bures St Mary and Bures Hamlet who gave their lives for King and Country in the Great War, which of course is to say the lost boys in two different counties.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2019-08-10 09:34:35