St Mary’s at Wetherden is just one of my favourite churches in central Suffolk, just one that designed a powerful impression on my to start with childhood take a look at in the early 1980s. I might been back again since additional not too long ago with my aunt who normally performs the organ in this article but it was a traveling check out and the number of pics I had to demonstrate for it ended up not deserving of the location, so arriving again right here on a sunny May perhaps afternoon appeared like the ideal time to rectify this.
This church helps make a very good perception as a person approaches from the east, it is a substantial building and handsomely decorated. At the churchyard gates the sturdy west tower greets the visitor framed by trees which helps make a serious visual influence, in particular when basking in the sunshine as it was on this situation (equally my past trips had been in additional overcast disorders). The entrance is on the south facet through a porch embedded in the south aisle relatively than projecting from it.
My most significant recollections of the inside have been the astonishing late medieval roofs of the nave and south aisle. The nave roof is a especially fine instance of the double-hammerbeam assortment and populated with more than forty carved figures of saints who peer down from little niches carved into the posts (2 times as a lot of as 1 ordinarily finds in these constructions). Originally they all would have risen from carved angels, alas prolonged since lost to puritan iconoclasts in the Submit Reformation period of time, what an influence they need to have experienced when the roof was complete (and very likely coloured as well). Only the minimal saints survived, and they far too had been systematically defaced but this problems is significantly less apparent now thanks to their delicate restoration by Victorian carvers who changed misplaced faces and arms to restore one thing of their unique impact. The flatter aisle roof is adorned with arched braces and is again adorned with angels (also Victorian restorations).
What will delight most readers even extra however are the sequence of animal carvings adorning the nave pews (all around fifty entirely). Some of these are authentic medieval perform (in direction of the rear on the north side) but the vast majority are spirited Victorian recreations and no a lot less fulfilling even with their deficiency of antiquity, the carver acquiring beautifully captured the medieval spirit and hence both equally teams of carvings type a attractive set.
The chancel past is alternatively dark with Victorian glass, to some degree gloomy right after the brightness of the nave and aisle, but there are good fragments of medieval glass to be identified gathered in the traceries of the east window. Originally there was an intensive scheme of pictorial glazing in this church and there is an account of notorious state-sponsored puritan iconoclast William Dowsing purchasing the destruction of all-around 160 ‘superstitious pics (in glass) together with the 68 angels now absent from the nave roof. Considerably of the destroyed glass would have been endowed by the local Sulyard family members who remained recusant subsequent the Reformation, a late 16th century monument of theirs in the south aisle plainly also had to endure the iconoclasts’s wrath.
I was below for some time snapping away. A woman was in the church performing some tidying up and we ended up chatting for a though. I mentioned how on my previous journey I would been with my aunt who played the organ and experienced even experienced a swift go on its keyboard myself (I hardly managed a several notes). Of study course she knew accurately who she was and had also regarded my late uncle (my mother’s only sibling) and stranger continue to she’d also invested a significant chunk of her daily life dwelling in my hometown of Rugby, smaller entire world! She designed me incredibly welcome and it was awesome to enthuse together, and fairly weird to wander into a church so significantly from house and however have mutual acquaintances in frequent with a complete stranger, undoubtedly a great way to split the ice!
Wetherden church is normally stored open in the course of the working day and is perfectly worthy of a take a look at. The historic accounts of what was misplaced below are more than enough to make just one weep, but happily there is even now plenty below to appreciate, each historic and not so historic.
www.suffolkchurches.co.british isles/wetherden.htm
Posted by Aidan McRae Thomson on 2019-11-23 14:30:28
Tagged: , Wetherden , church , Suffolk , medieval , architecture , inside , roof , wooden carving , woodwork
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