Bures is a fantastic previous riverside village, a city nearly, partly in Suffolk and partly in Essex. The identical was the moment genuine of nearby Sudbury, but the Ballingdon district there was drawn into Suffolk by boundary variations in the 1950s. Custom survives in this article, and this is nonetheless a split city. The Essex side is known as Bures Hamlet, but is now the larger element, with a railway station and housing estates.
The River Stour is the county border, and it flows not considerably from the western edge of the churchyard. The Suffolk facet kinds by itself Bures St Mary, though I am advised that this church was not devoted to St Mary right until the 19th century Anglican revival, when one particular of the benefits of the Oxford Movement was a renewed fascination in church dedications. Lots of of these ended up restored by very well-indicating antiquarians sorting via the historical information of the Diocese of Norwich, and the confusion arose mainly because of a now-vanished chapel in the churchyard dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. In point, the determination of this church in medieval times was almost certainly to the feast of All Saints.
The north aspect of the church faces the avenue, even though you can enter the church by means of either the north or the south porches. Both are wonderful. The red brick early 16th century south porch is stately and grand, a holy h2o stoup with supporting figures, and a wide open up area inside of suited for the conduct of parish business. There is a fearsome exterior headstop minimal on the west facet, which need to definitely be older than the porch – 13th century, I must think. Possibly the Tudors reused it, or the Victorians positioned it here throughout their restoration.
The other striking aspect of the exterior is the pink brick massing of the Waldegrave chantry on the south facet of the chancel, its east window considerably grander than that of the chancel by itself. Previously mentioned the porches rises Richard de Waldegrave’s tower of the late 14th century. Nevertheless, the foundation of the tower is a survival of an previously 1, and on its southern facet is a curious tomb recess, now vacant.
St Mary is a quintessential Anglican church, its 19th and 20th century reorderings standard of 1000’s of significant, affluent properties. But there are unusual matters in this church, all value going to see. If you search up, you will see that the ceiling is made up of flat, wood styles, with present day lighting models set into them. Mortlock credits the woodwork to Ewan Christian, who carried out the 19th century restoration. The lighting technique is from the 1990s. The arcades are lit from beneath, building the influence of an undercroft.
In the sanctuary and to the north of the altar, a person of the Waldegrave tombs sits grandly beside the higher camp Victoriana. It has been somewhat battered by the fortunes of heritage its brass has extensive gone, but the grand angel corbels that supported its also-vanished picket canopy endure. It is to Richard de Waldegrave, who built the tower, and it was applied as an Easter sepulchre. Wodewoses, East Anglia’s wild adult men of the woods, the corners.
And then, to the south of the chancel is the Waldegrave chantry. A tomb in the south east corner, really a cobbling jointly of two different Waldegrave tombs, has missing its brasses, but the standing memorial to the west is extra comprehensive. Alongside the front, the small children kneel in prayer. Their legs are curiously swirly, and another person not too long ago said to me that they glimpse as if they have been extruded out of a cake decorating established. The memorial remembers a William Waldegrave who died in the early 17th century, and the a lot more you glimpse at it the odder it receives. For occasion, although the ten weepers are in their traditional place, there are no effigies of the remembered dead. Even odder, the memorial inscription is on the again of the tomb, and ordinarily out of sight. This memorial is curiously awkwardly positioned, and feels alternatively in the way, till you remember that for 3 hundred years soon after the Reformation the liturgy experienced no have to have for gangways for processions, or for sights of altars. The tomb was possibly positioned deliberately so.
The Waldegraves have been not well known men and women in this parish, apparently. At the time of the Anglican reformers in the 1540s, there was a basic uprising listed here and the destruction in the church was so significant that the churchwardens were punished. A hundred years later on, the puritans meted out their fundamentalist justice to the Waldegrave young children, eliminating their fingers. And nonetheless, this fairly unappealing tomb continue to sits right here, and who remembers the puritans now?
The locale of the tomb is perhaps a pity, due to the fact the eastward check out in the chapel is otherwise its triumph. The five gentle window includes a modern glass memorial to the Waldegraves, such as the Catholic inscription that, of our charity, we should pray for their souls. The Sarum display screen backing the altar beneath is extremely efficient.
Heading back into the physique of the church, a wooden effigy of a knight rests in peace on a north aisle window recess, which is of course not its primary location. It dates from about 1330, and is produced of chestnut. No one actually is familiar with who he is, though some guides mention an individual termed Richard de Cornard. The lion below his ft has a somewhat sad expression, I imagine. Suffolk’s only other wood medieval effigies are at Boxted and Heveningham. Mortlock states that the survival of his protect is noteworthy and exceptional.This knight effigy may possibly or might not have occur from Bures church originally, and there is no way of telling now.
The most unusual function of St Mary is a thing you would not observe, or even believe to seem for unless you knew it was there. This is a weird small octagonal segment that juts out about ten toes up on the japanese encounter of the south side of the chancel arch. It is, of all points, a piscina. What is it doing up there? We need to picture the rood display screen, rood beam and rood loft, and all the liturgical paraphernalia of the pre-Reformation church. The rood loft below had an altar on it, and this piscina served the altar. Why is it so rare? Simply, this chancel arch was designed with a drain inside of it. Most rood loft altars have to have managed with a takeaway bowl. An amazing point, in many strategies.
I’m normally conscious alongside the River Stour of how civilised the south of Suffolk looks, and how wild Essex seems beyond it, as if the 21st century hadn’t very designed it but together the slim lanes from County Corridor at Chelmsford. North Essex is amazing biking and church-exploring country, but men and women appear to know the Suffolk aspect best. In the corner of the churchyard is a parish war memorial which is unusual, and possibly distinctive. It remembers The men of Bures St Mary and Bures Hamlet who gave their lives for King and Country in the Good War, which of system is to say the shed boys in two various counties.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2019-08-10 09:34:31
Tagged: , bures , suffolk , east anglia
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