All Saints, Eyke, Suffolk
This village straggles the active highway concerning Woodbridge and Snape due to the fact the closure of the nearby American airbase, it is much quieter than it applied to be, though when I arrived this way on a sub-zero working day in January 2017 I was pleased to see that the village store was still carrying out fantastic enterprise. Across the highway, and established back again from it, All Saints sits quietly, with no tower to direct you to it from afar.
At first sight, this is a simple, if uneven, tiny church, somewhat barn-like in its historical graveyard. Tall elm trees all around it are property to jackdaws and rooks their cries fill the air as they wheel higher than you. A wonderful yew caresses the south of the nave. The modern-day small porch provides no indicator that you are about to enter just one of the much more attention-grabbing church buildings in this section of Suffolk.
As you move down into the square south aisle and nave (in point, they appear broader than they are prolonged!) the to start with matter you see is a pair of stunning Norman arches, one about 10 feet to the east of the other, at the foundation of what was once the central tower, despite the fact that pretty much no indication remains of it from the outside the house now. Past them, the chancel opens up, its top accentuating the lowness of the arches which guide into it.
Sam Mortlock argues that All Saints was almost certainly a cruciform church as at Pakenham in west Suffolk, with the south chapel foremost off from the south-east corner of the nave getting up aspect of what was a south transept. Cautley viewed as a tripartite arrangement more very likely, as at Newton-by-Castle-Acre in Norfolk, mostly on the strength of the arches only owning mouldings on the western aspect. One particular of the decrease tower home windows can even now be viewed on the jap face from within just the chancel, and looks most curious. A bell rope disappears up into the ceilure. Although the western arch only has one particular band of chevrons, the eastern arch has two. If you glance carefully at the nave roof immediately in entrance of the western arch, you can see traces of paint, evidence of a one particular-time canopy of honour to the now-vanished rood. There is a modest collection of medieval and continental glass in the chancel north window, such as a superior high-quality scene of St Bridget feeding the beggars, two jolly mermaids and what surface to be the arms of the Borough of Terrific Yarmouth.
Edward Hakewill carried out the restoration below in the 1860s. He is responsible for the angels on the wall plate of the nave. The south aisle isn’t actually an aisle at all, more a completion of the sq. concerning unique 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 properly as a smaller sized lancet on the east side of the south transept, but the woodwork in the church is relatively far more new, and an attention-grabbing tale pertains to it.
Like many other Suffolk church buildings, together with Waldringfield across the estuary, a loved ones dynasty of vicars was responsible for the Anglican revival in this parish. These were being the Darlings, James pere et fils. They held this residing for 80 several years, concerning 1859 and 1939. The father oversaw Hakewill’s restoration of what experienced become a close to-derelict church. The son, who took around in 1893, experienced a enthusiasm for woodcarving. He taught his parishioners the ability at evening lessons in the village faculty. Amongst them, the villagers generated the benches, font cover, organ case, chapel display screen and reredos. If you glance at the bench ends, you will locate James Darling’s pet pet dog, and some other not likely animals such as a beaver, a snake, a squirrel and a penguin. A topped determine with a rosary on the poppyhead of one bench most likely signifies the Blessed Virgin, and a seated cleric with a smile on his face is in all probability 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 fairly sombre affair, also by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, demonstrating the children coming to Christ even though angels try and display what Charity appears like. The parish’s most well known treasure, the 15th century Eyke essential, is now in the British Museum. Its wards are shaped to make the word IKE, an option form of the village name. I was let down to explore that the doorlock has been transformed because, but I suppose retention of the unique would have built this the least complicated of all churches to crack into. A fibre-glass duplicate hangs on the wall.
It pleases me to appear again in this article. It is now seventeen decades since my 1st pay a visit to, on New Year’s Working day 2000, I was the to start with man or woman of the century* to sign the site visitors e book, and it was satisfying to flip back again to it on my return in 2006 and 2010. But I have still left it as well extensive, and on my most latest check out in 2017 I located that a new visitor’s book experienced taken the location of the old 1. Ah very well. Again in 2000, the nice girl practising the organ experienced advised me that one of the Reverend Darling’s daughters was still alive, and often visited to see all over again her father’s and grandfather’s handiwork. In 2010 I questioned if she nevertheless did, but now some seventeen several years have passed, and I suppose she does not any much more.
*Certainly, I know that pedants will inform you that the 21st Century commenced on New Several years Working day 2001. Never hear to them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-01-29 18:36:48
Tagged: , Eyke , East Anglia , suffolk , church , churches , nikon , d5300
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