Church Heritage Record id11935

5-bay aisled nave and 3-bay chancel, south porch, west tower and north vestry.

Nave 22m (67’5ft) x 8m (25 ft).

A church at Redgrave is mentioned in Domesday, but the present building would appear to date from the early 14th century, though it may stand on the original site. The south aisle and clearstorey were altered and the porch added in the 15th century. 

The vestry and perhaps the tower were added in the late 16th century, the tower refaced with bricks at the end of the 18th century at the expense of Rowland Holt. The church was repaired c 1850, and there have been minor late 19th and early 20th-century alterations; most of the good quality furnishings and fittings date to this period, but the church also preserves a remarkable collection of post-Reformation monuments, mostly to the Bacon dynasty.

The archaeological potential of the building and site is high. Apart from the archaeological deposits, features and burials associated with the church, there is also much evidence of early settlement in the area, particularly in the Iron Age. Roundhouses and other settlement evidence were noted in a pipeline by Basil Brown in the 1950’s on Beer Lane c 400 m to the north, and a 9th-century Saxon strap-end was found 200m to the north-west.

Although mainly in the Decorated style of the early 14th century, the constant development of the building is represented by additions of quality from every succeeding century. 

The elegant west tower is square in section, quoined and unbuttressed and of four stages, with offsets to each stage and a chamfered plinth. In the north-west angle with the nave is a two-stage stair turret. The lowest stage of the tower has a west doorway with a boarded door within a louvred round-arched head, taken down to impost blocks. Above this is a small round headed window, with another such in the third stage in the north face. The belfry openings are louvred and round headed, the louvres original and in poor condition. The tower has a plain parapet with stepped pinnacles.

The fabric of the body of the church is a patchwork of flint and brick, with patches of render adhering, which would probably repay careful recording and inspection. The fenestration of the aisles is irregular, either Decorated or Perpendicular in style, reflecting the complex development of the building. The 2-light west windows of both aisles have original 14th-century tracery, with cusped main lights and mouchettes above and a quatrefoil in the heads.

The middle two bays windows moving east are 2-lights with Decorated tracery, and the easternmost bay has a large 3-light 16th-century Perpendicular window with a depressed arched head. The aisle east window is a 3-light 15th-century Perpendicular window. The bays are defined by stumpy buttresses of two weatherings with moulded bases, and the aisle has a plain parapet.

The south porch takes up the second bay from the west of the south aisle. 

The nave clearstorey is of the 15th century, pierced by ten 2-light windows with cusped panel tracery under segmental pointed arched heads. 

The chancel is lower than the nave, the roof more steeply pitched. The east wall is pierced by a large 14th-century window of 7 lights, with complex and unique curvilinear tracery in a pointed arch under a hoodmould. The window is flanked by angle buttresses of three weatherings with stooled statue niches and trefoiled gablet heads. 

The north east vestry is quite a rare survival from the 16th century. It is built in brick in English bond on a plinth.

The nave is flanked by the tall 5-bay arcades with double wave-moulded pointed arches, with mask stopped hoodmoulds. These are carried on quatrefoil piers with inner fillets and moulded caps. The high, whitewashed interior is quite flooded with light from the huge windows and clearstorey on a clear day, an uplifting sight.

This also illuminates the splendid 15th-century 10-bay nave roof, which has alternate single hammerbeam and queen strut trusses carried on posts taken down to mask corbels.  There are carved arched braces to the brattished hammerbeams and tie beams, and to the cambered collars with short king posts.  The tie-beams carry queen struts with arched struts to the collars and principals, with double butt purlins and a ridge piece; all the main timbers are roll-moulded, and the wallplates are double brattished.   The aisle roofs are lean-to with arched braces to the principals, and brattished wallplates. The nave is still fully pewed.

The chancel arch is pointed and double wave-moulded, carried on complex shafted jambs with fillets and moulded caps. The 6-bay chancel roof with arch braced collars was added in the 19th century. The chancel windows have moulded rere-arches with mask stopped hoodmoulds. The easternmost chancel south window has its lower part blocked by a 15th-century triple sedilia, its canted canopies with lierne vaulting, rectilinear tracery, crocketed ogee heads, Tudor rose and brattished cornice with angels; adjacent piscina with a cusped and crocketed ogee head, with a hoodmould taken down to lion stops.