Church of St Mary

Details

TL 97 SW TROSTON CHURCH LANE

3/51 Church of St. Mary 14.7.55

- I

Parish church. C13 and later. Flint, with ashlar dressings: roofs of clay plaintiles with alternating bands of plain and fishscale tiles. Nave and chancel, west tower and south porch. Early C14 tower, mainly in kidney flint, part coursed, with angle buttresses faced with ashlar. 4 stages. 3 string courses. A Y-window on each face of the top stage, one Y-window in 2nd stage on west, and a small square window in 3rd stage on south. Plain crenellated stone top. Fine south porch in black knapped random flint with a base of stone panels from which all the flint flushwork is missing. Diagonal buttresses. The front has delicate panels of flushwork, 3 empty canopied niches above the doorway and a crenellated parapet with flushwork panels alternating with crowned monograms. Entrance with fleurons to arch. Open timber roof with butt purlins and arch-braced collars. Continuous arch to south doorway of c.1300, without capitals. Nave, mainly in kidney flint, partly covered in old render on south side, re-rendered C20 on north. 4 bays: 2-light windows with cusped heads and pointed hood-moulds. Chancel rendered, with 3 lancet windows on the south wall and 2 on the north, all with very wide inner splays. The south- western lancet has a low side window below it, blocked, but with the wooden hinged shutter in situ inside. Simple priest's door with cavetto-mould to surround. 3 lancets to east window. The interior of the nave is filled with crudely-carved mid C19 benches, in a curious Jacobean Gothic style: a few C15 benches, with damaged poppyheads and figures, at the back. Also at the rear are the 5 bells, dismounted and standing on the floor, and the font: a plain octagonal bowl and moulded shaft on a high round base, with a damaged Jacobean cover. On the north wall are the remains of 4 medieval paintings: St Christopher, St. George and the Dragon twice, and the martyrdom of St. Edmund. Over the chancel arch, the remains of a Doom. On the south wall, the arms of James I, repainted for George I. In the south-east corner, the remains of a piscina with cusped ogee head. All the heads of the nave windows are filled with fragments of medieval glass. C15 carved screen, with one-light divisions, crudely guilded and repainted, with a C19 cross above. Fine Jacobean pulpit with a reader's desk in front of it made up of a mixture of heavily-carved C17 panels, probably reused from an overmantel. Plain, 6-bay rafter roof with collars and scissor-bracing: no tie-beams. Floor to nave paved with old 4-inch tiles in black and red, set diagonally. The chancel has Jacobean panelling along the side walls, and reused panelling behind the alter is said to be the front of the rood loft (cf. Munro Cautley, Suffolk Churches and their Treasures, p.328). A double piscina with restored traceried head. Several C15 benches, with poppy-heads and animals, one apparently a mermaid (cf.Ixworth Thorpe). C15 roof: 3 bays, moulded butt purlins and solid arched braces to high collars. Moulded cornice. 3 memorial tablets on the north wall, the central to Lieut. Henry Capel-Lofft, killed near Badajoz in the Peninsular War. Memorial stained glass of c.1960 in the east window.

Listing NGR: TL9003172270

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

284244

Legacy System:

LBS

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