Imagine a town centre, which on one side of the main road has the normal mix of shops and pubs, but on the other side has three fine churches?
Well, that is Bungay, and as well as the churches there is also the Buttercross, marking the ancient centre of the town.
In fairness, Holy Trinity isn’t really on the main road, but completes a large area of peace and quiet, in what is now a very gentle market town as traffic no longer thunders through it, or did not when I visited.
Bungay is also home to one Harry Potter. Yes, that one, the wizzard. Well, the books were produced here, or at least the hardback ones were, as Clay’s the printers seem to have possession of half the town for their printing works.
Bungay sits on the southern bank of the River Waveney, and therefore is in Suffolk, but to me it seems Norfolk, so much nearer Norwich and Ipswich, and the proliferation of yellow and green shirts rather than blue and white ones is obvious. Saying that, City were playing home on this day, so that might explain it. Locals travelling to Carrow Road have to leave the ground sharpish at full time to get back to the bus station so to catch the last bus back home.
Such is the life for a Bungayonian, which I suspect they are not called.
And transport to Lowestoft is, if anything, even worse, I suppose you could always row along the river.
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The Church of St. Mary
Was parochial, previous to the dissolution of the nunnery, as well as conventual; and probably its handsome western front, which was built subsequently to the north aisle, formed the grand approach from the town. It is yet called ‘Lady Church’ by old inhabitants in the place. At the great fire in 1688 it suffered considerable damage; but the statement of the Brief that it was burnt to the ground is an exaggeration. The old benches, and possibly the font—for the present one is modern—might have been consumed, as was evidently the roof of the south aisle, which was relaid and finished in 1699; but the fine oaken roof of the nave escaped. Nor were all the bells melted in the conflagration, the writer having furnished to one of the churchwardens, some years since, a translation of the old Longobardic legends which encircled two of them, which have since been re-cast.
The interior of this edifice is light and elegant, its clerestory being supported on each side by five columns composed of clustered shafts. The want of a chancel mars the justness of its proportions very considerably; but its greatest disfigurement is a huge and ugly altar-piece. One or two ancient piscinas have lately been laid open, but their workmanship demands no especial notice. The tower, of slender but delicate proportions, stands at the west end of the south aisle, and the massy bands of iron with which its internal columns are braced together attest the injury its foundations have sustained by an injudicious grave-digger, who nearly brought it to the ground in 1790, by excavating a vault beneath its base.
The old parish book commences in 1523, and contains the churchwardens’ accounts before the Dissolution. It is a very curious record, in high preservation, and some of its entries show that many popish observances were retained at Bungay long after its nunnery was stript and ruined.
The last entry proves that the good people of Bungay had taste enough to procure and employ an elegant piece of church furniture, which the inhabitants of Mettingham disregarded.
‘The brassen lecterne’ was, I presume, brought from the chapel of the dissolved college there; an edifice fitted up in most elegant style. Subsequent fanaticism, however, has failed to spare what the rough hands of the reformers left uninjured.
The following armorial bearings formerly ornamented the windows of this church.
Ufford, sab., a cross engrailed or. Kenton, sable, a chev. arg. between 3 cinquefoils or.
Fitz-Otes, az., 4 bars or, a canton erm. quartering
Knivett, arg., a bend sable.
Montacute, erm., 3 fusils in fess gules.
. . . . . . . . . a bord. az. charged with 8 martlets or. (fn. 55)
Monuments.—In 1612 there was a stone for Reginald Barrow. (fn. 56)
Reginald Brown, Gent., died Jan. 2, 1767. Arms, arg. on a bend az. 3 eagles displayed or.
Richard Nelson, Gent., died Dec. 2, 1727. Arms, per pale arg. and sab. a chev. between 3 fleurs-de-lis counterchanged.
Robert Scales, who gave the organ to the church, died Nov. 7, 1732.
James Browne, Gent., died Jan. 9, 1755.
Henry Williams, died May 25, 1768, aged 79.
Edward Cooper, late surgeon in Bungay, died March 31, 1764. Arms, az. a tortoise, pale-wise, or.
Valentine Lumley, Clerk, died April 26, 1794, aged 70.
Thomas Bewicke, Clerk, died Feb. 7, 1842, aged 74. Arms, arg. 5 lozenges in fess gul., each charged with a mullet of the first, between 3 bears’ heads erased sab.
Gregory Clarke, Gent., died May 10, 1725. Arms, arg. on a bend gules 3 swans prop. between as many pellets.
John Davie, D.D., Master of Sidney Sussex Coll., Camb., died Oct. 8, 1813, aged 36.
Lancelot Davie, died Oct. 9, 1816, aged 33.
Thomas Bardwell, portrait painter, died Sept. 9, 1767, aged 63.
Bungay St. Mary, as a benefice, has been a perpetual curacy only, since the dissolution of the nunnery.
The church contains 846 sittings, of which 216 are free.
Among the plates in the fourth volume of Betham’s ‘Baronetage of England’ is the representation of a very curious and rich "Atchievement of Le Seneschal de Buxton, Seneschal of Bourdeaux, temp. Ric. II.," which was taken from the priory of Bungay in the time of Henry VIII. The writer requested permission of the family to have it re-engraved for the present work, but not having been favoured with an answer to his application, he does not consider himself at liberty to enrich his volume with this desirable illustration.
www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/suffolk-history-antiq…
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By lorries along Bungay High Street, St Mary stands soberly, over the Butter Cross, and the Fleece, and the castle beyond. Stately, plump spirelets rise from the turrets, bearing fleches on which an arrow and lightning spike lay crossed. A lattice of fretted arches is sustained gently beneath them in the mild morning air.
I photographed with relish the flintwork and flushwork, the ruined priory of God and the Holy Cross, the erect gargoyles, lions in spandrels, the punished water stoup which gave to my eye the faint hint of Catholic survivals. Signatures of all things I am here to read, angels and archangels, the nearing pinnacles, that shield of the passion. Flint black, weathered cope, stone buttress. Coloured signs. I closed my eyes to hear my shoes brushing ancient grass and grassy gravel. Am I walking into eternity through St Mary’s churchyard?
Swish, swash, crush.
Begin.
Walnut by plaster, W. B.’s dole cupboard of 1673. Q rat? Curate. Primitive bishops watch on, watch passing generations. I sauntered sadly from bright light, sauntering sadly, light no more. A classical font, a dusky battered plate, rises up like Holy Trinity. Beyond, walled, an old retainer.
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HOW A GREAT SUFFOLK CHURCH IS BURNED DOWN
Fifteen years later, Bungay is destroyed by a fire that starts in a bakers shop. The church is gutted, and even the remarkable tower of 1470 needs rebuilding. Inside, virtually nothing medieval survives the fire, and St Mary will be variously refurnished by 18th century aesthetes (the font) 19th century sacramentalists (the altar, the glass, the eastwards position) until
WE SEE THE CHURCH FURNISHER AT WORK
the seven works of mercy in the eastern end of the north aisle are installed by Charles and Alexander Gibbs, and the panelling behind the altar is presented by local writer Henry Rider Haggard. Mortlock thinks it 17th century Flemish, and it is the best woodwork in the church because
K.M.A.
the enthusiastic protestants of the parish took down the rood screen during the early years of Elizabeth, and were condemned for it, having to provide a replacement, of which nothing survives, since it was destroyed in the fire, presumably, and
K.M.R.S.A.
in any case, the church is now redundant. It is the biggest and most urban redundant church in Suffolk, the local Anglicans feeling quite at home, thank you very much, in Holy Trinity across the road to the east, and now the Churches Conservation Trust watches over
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
the grandeur that was once a major East Anglian parish church. Beccles, where the parish church was also destroyed by fire, and at Bungay there are one or more survivals from the church’s Catholic heyday, for in the south aisle he found a surviving piscina, the saving remnant.
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What discrete succession of images did Simon meanwhile perceive?
Reclined against the pulpit, he perceived across the range of benches a patina of bat urine, a heady aroma of antique, two women reading a notice, a woman looking up at the west window, a man leaving the church holding a CCT guidebook.
Of what similar apparitions did Simon think?
Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or two, had inhabited parish churches. Of ghosts in big churches of Blythburgh, Southwold, Lowestoft St Margaret. Of awestruck agnostics at Iken and Lindsey St James. Of American tourists at Long Melford and Lavenham.
What did Simon see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the women to the opposite wall?
An elegant 1760 monument for Henry Williams by Thomas Rawlins; a monument to Pergrina Browne by the first named sculptor’s father; other monuments of the 18th century by Norwich artists; 18th century lead with the churchwardens names incised within.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the nave, reentering the porch, closing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the daylight, reascended to the churchyard, reapproached the High Street, and reentered.
In what directions did the narrator head?
At rest relative to his former actions, he entered the Fleece public house, and availed himself of an imperial pint of Adnam’s Broadside Ale.
In what posture?
Semilaterally, in relation to the floor, knees crooked, posterior upon a chair, arms rested on a table, guidebooks open.
Weary?
He rests. He has travelled.
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Yes because he never saw a church like that before as be so big and urban and yet so empty and yet they are so many of them that empty nowadays except this one of course they’ve actually given up the ghost in not that I’d like to say for sure that Anglicans believe in ghosts or anything like that nowadays not even the Holy one he’d say but you’d know he was just having you on and pulling your leg because he wants you to think he’s a radical catholic and whats all this with the writing like other writers anyway, Jesus, you’d think the man couldn’t put two words together of his own.
And the weather he has in his churchyards you’d think every day was some winter storm or bright early spring or else its that he’s sitting down and resting on account of the heat, Mother of God you’d think we never had a day when you’d not notice the weather because it wasn’t worth a word when you could be talking about something else, and if its not the weather its some r- word, or its the people I mean what do people have to do with churches, and yet he’s always meeting them and Holy God who gives a stuff about which keyholder said this and what that Vicar was moaning about I mean people read the site for the buildings, and even there he can’t just call a building a building like you’d put down a straw perhaps and you’d say you see that straw Simon, that’s a straw, and no he’d be going on about sacramentalism and eastwards positions and reformation, that’s it, reformation I mean who’s he when he’s at home? and now Jesus would you credit it if he’s not fancying himself like some Frenchman who writes the biggest books you’ve ever seen, and bringing in the women he sleeps with I mean men are such fools when you think about it or give them half a chance because if it was the women who were writing about the churches you can be sure it would be us having the fun, and not taking any notice at all of the locked doors and fearful keyholders because you can only ask so many times can’t you and if I met a difficult keyholder I’d dare him with my eyes to say no and again no and I’d ask him would he no to say no and first I’d walk away from him no and think of the things I’d be doing instead of visiting the church no and writing about it no and my heart would be going like mad and no I’ll say no I won’t No.
Trieste-Zurich-Paris-Bungay 1914-2002
