Churches

Holy Trinity, Blythburgh

First appeared on Sylly Suffolk website, 2001

WHEN William Dowsing, the official Parliamentary Visitor of the Civil War intifadeh, came to Blythburgh on April 9, 1644, he gave orders for "20 cherubims to be taken down". The order was not carried out.

The cherubim, or angels, still adorn the single roof that stretches in one continuous line along nave and chancel, not on hammerbeams as in so many Suffolk churches, but memorably attached to the central ridge beam of the near-flat tie-beam roof.

At least, 12 remain, in back-to-back pairs. Only the extreme east and west bays lack them, so it would seem Dowsing's figure of 20 was a hasty and inaccurate note - hardly surprising, considering Blythburgh was only one of six or seven churches he visited with destructive intent that day.

So why was the instruction not followed? Was there local resistance to the puritan demands - or was it simply difficult to carry out because the roof is so high and hard to reach?

The latter seems more likely, for the command to "take down 200 pictures" - that is, to remove most of the stained glass from the church's many windows - was faithfully acted upon.

The church today, as a result, is gloriously light and spacy; on a dull day it can almost seem brighter inside. It must previously have been darker, but sumptuously full of colour. The combination of all that glass and an eye-catchingly exposed position now throw maximum skylight on the whitewashed stonework and pale brick floor , and would have made the "pictures" shine richly.

Lit by a clerestory of 36 closely-spaced Perpendicular windows, and themselves brightly painted in red, green and gold, the angels must have soared above in a suitably other-worldly fashion. Both the angels and roof itself retain a lot of colour: the lead pellets they are riddled with may have been fired by Dowsing's troopers, as has often been asserted, but could equally well have come from attempts in the 18th century to rid the then distressingly dilapidated church of nesting birds.

The survival of the angels is near miraculous for in addition to the dangers of Dowsing and lead shot they have seen off a plague of death-watch beetle, and the perils of 300 years when the roof was expected imminently to collapse.

Now a tiny village, Blythburgh was an important place in Saxon East Anglia, the first resting-place of its first Christian king, Anna, in the mid-seventh century. By Domesday it was a royal borough and site of a missionary minster church, and later still a 12th century Augustinian priory, which spawned the present church building in 1412 - though the tower is a century older and remains rather small and plain for the grand church it is now attached to. By this time Blythburgh was a prosperous port, and like others along this stretch of coast it raised a magnificent church.

Those at nearby Walberswick and Covehithe later proved too grand for shrinking communities to maintain. Both were largely demolished in the 17th century, leaving much smaller working churches surrounded by massive ruins.

Blythburgh came perilously close to a similar fate around the same time, going unused for 12 years because of its state of near-collapse. Somehow it survived to be extensively, and very sensitively, restored throughout the last century or so.

Among its many delights are a beautifully carved and perfectly preserved set of wooden apostles and other saints, now fronting the choir stalls but probably originally part of the rood loft. Most of the figures are identifiable by the emblems they carry - St Andrew with his X-shaped cross, St Peter with his key, St Bartholomew with his flaying knife etc. Their unusual hairstyle is echoed in one of the many stone figures that decorate the roof parapet outside.

Just one of these figures is female: she and the figure alongside her are both crowned and have been variously identified as Christ and the Virgin, or King Anna and his daughter St Etheldreda (founder of Ely cathedral). Both suggestions may be fanciful, but the latter seems a great deal more likely as the pair have none of the conventional imagery associated with Jesus and his mother.

In the stocks

In the sickbed

Slander?

Smirking Pride

Local woodcarvers also enjoyed a creative bonanza around 1475 with a commission for three distinct series of bench ends. Despite Dowsing, one can still identify some of the Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Works of Mercy and the Four Seasons.

Here too, though, there is some disagreement of identification. Does the poor fellow in the stocks represent a sin (drunkenness) or a virtue (visiting prisoners)? And is the chap sitting up in bed the personification of Sloth, or does he represent the merciful act of visiting the sick?

In both cases, I believe it is our pity not our disapproval that is being called for as both figures have outstretched hands with upraised, pleading palms.

And there is a further massive clue - because there is another figure of Sloth.

In medieval times, this sin was not associated simply with idleness, as we think of it today. It was specifically sinning against the virtue of Zeal. So the figure sometimes called Hypocrisy, praying with open eyes, is in fact the personification of true medieval Sloth.

Beyond dispute are the fat-bellied Gluttony, and the exquisite smirk of Pride. You will find it stated elsewhere that there is an image of Slander, not on an elbow-rest but a poppyhead, depicted with a wide open mouth and a slit tongue. There certainly is such a poppyhead, but it is anything but unique - you will find its like in other churches throughout East Anglia. I believe it is more closely related to the figure of the green man, that pagan survival also to be found in a great many churches. In any case, slander is not one of the Seven Deadlies - any more, in fact, than hypocrisy or drunkenness.

The seasons are delightfully illustrated by rural pursuits: the sower in spring, the reaper in autumn. The figure said to illustrate summer is a priest is in a cassock and biretta holding what appears to be a spray of flowers - apparently a rogationtide image similar to ones used in contemporary books illustrating the month of May.

If none of these sequences is complete, there are still a lot of exquisite carvings to admire. All are damaged to some degree, whether by 16th or 17th century intent, or by the natural ravages of time. They have not suffered to the same extent as the font, however.

This somewhat misshapen lump of stone was probably once one of Suffolk's splendid seven sacrament fonts, but all of its panels both on the bowl and the pedestal have had their carvings ruthlessly and rigorously removed, almost certainly during the Reformation. And there was more damage to come later.

In August 1577 the Devil himself came calling. Most of the villagers, it seems, were in the church sheltering from a fierce storm when lightning struck the spire that then topped the tower, sending it crashing through the nave roof. The falling masonry brought down with it the westernmost pair of angels from the roof, broke off part of the font and killed a man and a boy in the congregation. Many others were scorched by the lightning bolt.

And if you doubt that their burns came from Old Nick in person, you may still examine the charred fingermarks he left as he fled through the north door...