Church Heritage Record 633137

The medieval lords of the manor were the de Scales family, who had the right to appoint the parish priest. The Benedictine foundation of Blackborough Priory near King’s Lynn was founded by Roger de Scales in 1150, originally for monks but later becoming a nunnery. That connection ceased with the dissolution of the priory in 1539, when the power to appoint clergy passed to the Crown (however in 1958 the benefice was united with Haughley, and since then appointments have alternated between the Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich).

The list of rectors starts with William de Wetherden in 1219, but the earliest part of the present building is the chancel, which dates from c. 1330-50. The east window retains some fragments of glass which may date from this time. In the 1450s the chancel was increased in height to receive a new hammerbeam roof; a new south window and the present west tower probably also date from this time. In 1460 the manor of Wetherden was acquired by John Sulyard, who built Wetherden Hall in the northeast of the parish (a remnant of this survives, part of a Grade II-listed farmhouse lying within a scheduled moated area). The present nave and south aisle of the church were built soon afterwards, the latter started by Sir John Sulyard, who was knighted by Henry VIII and died in 1487. The work – including the south porch - was completed by 1520 by his widow Ann and her second husband Sir Thomas Bourchier.

After the Reformation the Sulyard family maintained their Catholic faith, and were rewarded for their loyalty by Queen Mary, who granted them the nearby manor of Haughley Park. In 1552 the rector of St Mary’s, John Collyn, was deprived of his living on account of his adherence to the reformed faith.  The Sulyard family maintained the south aisle as their chapel, with monuments and other embellishments. This no doubt made it a particular target of the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing, who in 1643 was appointed ‘Commissioner for removing the monuments of idolatry and superstition from churches in the Eastern Association’. His diary for 5 February 1644 records that ‘We brake 100 superstitious Pictures in Sr Edward Silliard’s Isle, and gave order to brake down 60 more; and to take down 68 Cherubims; and to levell the steps in the Chancel; there was taken up 19 superstitious Inscriptions, that weighed 65 pounds’.

The Sulyard connection continued through the eighteenth century, the eaves of the south aisle being rebuilt by Edward Sulyard in 1758. He died in 1799, and the Haughley estate passed to another Catholic family, the Jerninghams.

At least the south aisle of the church was reseated with box pews in the early nineteenth century, some of which remain. A major restoration took place in 1861, when new seating was installed which echoed the design of surviving fifteenth century seating in the church.

The church suffered bomb damage in 1941, with loss of much of the window glass. Twentieth century alterations have been minor, the only notable addition being that of a vestry on the north side.   

Description of church and contents

On plan the church consists of a nave, south aisle, chancel and west tower. The south porch is incorporated in the aisle, while a twentieth century flat-roofed vestry gives off the north side of the nave. A small vaulted space gives off the north side of the chancel at its east end, of uncertain origin and purpose – see below. The church is faced with rubble flint and ashlar dressings, with some areas of later brick repair; the shallow nave and aisle roofs are leaded, while the steeper roofs of the chancel and its northern lean-to are covered with plain tiles.

The oldest part of the building is the chancel, which is of mid-fourteenth century date. It has diagonal buttresses at the corners with carved enrichment in the gabled cap, and a fine east window, of four lights with reticulated tracery. Above the window is an image niche and the carved base of a gable cross. The fifteenth-century raising of the chancel roof is evident in the east gable end and in the upper brick courses of the north chancel wall (although the present brickwork looks later). This wall has a two-light window with fourteenth century tracery, and a small lean-to structure also of fourteenth century date, incorporating some brickwork and with a slit window on the east side; it is described in the list entry as a vestry. The south wall has a priest’s door with moulded surround and a three-light late medieval window, similar to those in the south aisle (which extends in front of the south chancel wall, stopping just short of the priest’s door).     

The early sixteenth century south aisle is the showpiece elevation of the church, with better quality flintwork than elsewhere and fine carved limestone detailing in the plinth and around the doorway. It is of five bays, the westernmost bay incorporating the porch and the easternmost extending in front of the chancel. The bays are separated by stepped buttresses, angled at the corners. At about eye level on the second buttress to the right of the main entrance is an inscribed Mass dial. Between the buttresses, the south elevation has large three-light windows with Perp tracery, with a three-light window on the return east elevation and a smaller two-light one at the west end of the aisle. A limestone plinth runs around the aisle, with flushwork panels inset with trefoil arches and heraldic devices set within star-shaped recesses (which are also set into the buttresses below the capping). The buttress to the right of the entrance has a tall panel carved with an Annunciation Lily, the symbolic significance of which appears to have escaped the notice of Dowsing and his men. There is defaced carved detail in the spandrels over the arched and moulded entrance to the porch, and further carved stone heraldic devices of the Bourchier and Sulyard families in the frieze above this. Above the frieze is an oak sundial, the painted detail now lost. 

The north elevation of the nave is of four bays, three of the windows with Geometrical tracery and one (to the west) of more Perp character. There are later (post-medieval, probably eighteenth century) raking brick buttresses on this side. Above the line of the buttresses, the upper walls has been rebuilt in brick. A twentieth century flat-roofed vestry lies below the western window, of flint with brick detail.

A plain stone plinth runs around the broad west tower, which is of four stages and has corner buttresses. Three image niches with ogee heads and quatrefoils etc. are placed over the west door, which has carved medieval corbel heads to the hoodmould and oak doors with tracery panels (the doors, seldom used, were renewed or replaced in the nineteenth century). Above this is a deeply recessed three-light window with Perp tracery, to the ringing chamber. A clock (installed in 2013 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II) is mounted on the otherwise plain wall surface of the west face of the second stage, while the north and south faces have small lancet openings. The belfry stage has two-light windows on each side, with central gargoyles and embattled parapet above.

The south porch entrance has eighteenth century wooden gates with simple Chinese Chippendale detailing in the upper halves. This leads into the porch area, brick paved and with oak medieval benches with poppyheads at the sides. A plain moulded pointed door has a worn threshold and oak door with inset wicket door, around which iron strap hinges are wrapped.

Inside, the nave is separated from the aisle by an arcade of three bays. There is an off-centre arch to the tower, enclosed by the organ with infilling above, and a tall wide arch at the entrance to the chancel. On the north side a modern door leads to the vestry. The wall surfaces are plastered and limewashed white; there is no visible evidence of wall paintings, but the possibility of their existence below later layers cannot be excluded. The circulation areas of the floors in the nave and aisle are of brick, with some red and black nineteenth century encaustic tiles, while the chancel floor has encaustic tiles.

In the chancel, two renewed niches flank the east window. A fourteenth century piscina on the south side has a heavy hood mould and an enriched finial and blind tracery; a carved human head looks down from the western hoodmould terminal. Alongside it is a plain sedilia. On the north wall opposite is a contemporary recess for an Easter sepulchre with cusping and a triangular-headed top. The recess may at one time have opened onto the small vaulted cell off the north side of the chancel (measuring 7ft x 5ft), described in the list entry as a vestry and originally in all probability a small chapel. This space is reached from the chancel via a small medieval door with blind Y-tracery and long iron hinges.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the interior is the carved timber roofs. The nave has an oak hammerbeam roof of nine bays, each truss with a pair of hammerbeams with pendant posts, from which rise arch braces to a tier of false hammerbeams. From the backs of these further arch braces rise to a collar beam and king post. All the main members are moulded, and there are seated canopied figures beneath both the wall posts and the hammer posts. The aisle roof has arch-braces with rich and varied carved detail, and bosses bearing shields or foliage beneath the intersections. There are six winged angels in the roof, mainly at the east end of the aisle (one of which has dropped and is in need of re-fixing). The chancel roof is of single true hammerbeam type in four bays, of similar date and quality to that in the nave.

The church contains a large number of medieval and later furnishings. In chronological order, these are:

Fragments of fourteenth and fifteenth century stained glass in the upper lights of the east window.

In front of the organ at the west end of the nave, a fifteenth century octagonal limestone font, bearing shields on the bowl, much restored. It has a seventeenth century stained oak pyramid cover, with embattled base.

On the north side of the nave is a set of thirteen poppyhead benches, with animal figures seated upon the bench ends. They date from the fifteenth century (restored in the nineteenth century) and are now on raised pew platforms.

In the aisle is a fine limestone and marble monument to Sir John Sulyard (d.1574). A tomb chest with pilastered sides and shields is surmounted by a panel of four kneeling figures and Sir John’s achievement, framed by Corinthian columns supporting a pedimented entablature. There is some damage to the entablature on one side.

Hanging from the south wall is a wooden helmet and shield belonging to Sir John.

In the southeast corner of the aisle, enclosed by later box pews, is a tomb chest with marble top (no visible inscription or date).

In the chancel floor is a slab with a brass to John Daniell (d.1584). There are further indents minus their brasses in the nave and aisle.

The altar or communion table is a Jacobean oak table with turned legs, raised with a false top. The chairs alongside the altar are also Jacobean.

In the aisle are four painted hatchments, three to members of the Sulyard family, one (on the west wall) to a member of the Crawford family.

At the east end of the aisle, painted pitch pine box pews of c.1800 (some further pews of similar character were removed from the east end of the aisle in the 1980s).

The octagonal pulpit on the north side of the chancel arch is nineteenth century, but contains fifteenth century oak traceried panels, possibly from a rood screen.

On the front four rows of the north side of the nave, and on the south side, the poppyhead benches are copies of the late medieval ones on the north side, probably from c.1861. Similarly-detailed benches in the south aisle retain their gates and face towards the nave rather than eastwards.  The chancel stalls, also with poppyheads, probably date from this time too. 

Later monuments include, in the south aisle, a good classical monument to Edward Sulyard (d.1799), and a pair of matching neoclassical marble memorials to members of the Crawford family of Haughley Park, and in the chancel several mainly nineteenth century marble memorials, the best perhaps being a neoclassical monument to Elisabeth Jane, wife of the Hon. Rev Henry Leslie, who died in childbirth in 1816, aged just 19.

The fragments of medieval glass apart, the stained glass in the east window depicts four large figures of Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist and Christ. It dates from c.1863 and is signed H. Hughes (presumably Henry Hughes of Ward & Hughes). Also by Hughes is a Crucifixion window on the south side of the chancel, c.1865, and an angel in a window on the north side of the chancel (otherwise restored after wartime bomb damage with glass of c.1950). Another window by Thomas Willement in the nave (north side) also suffered bomb damage and was mostly renewed after the war. The remaining windows have plain fronted or tinted glass in diamond quarries, nineteenth century or later. 

There are several sixteenth century references in churchwardens’ accounts to an organ at St Mary’s. The present instrument was installed in front of the tower arch as a memorial to the men of the parish who fell in the Great War. The parish guidebook says it dates from 1924; the National Pipe Organ Register says it was built by John Rayson & Son of Ipswich in 1914.

A further village war memorial is beside the main entrance, a painted wooden board (including the name of two civilians).

There are six bells. The treble was cast by the Whitechapel bell foundry and installed in 1911 to commemorate the coronation of King George V. The second and third are the oldest, both dating from 1673, and both cast by Miles Graye of Colchester. The fourth was cast by the Whitechapel foundry in 1886, for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the fifth in 1786 by T. Osborne of Downham, and the sixth (tenor) in 1702 by Henry Pleasant of Sudbury. There is also a set of handbells in the tower, cast in in 1886 for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.