History at St Peter's Church, Spexhall

 

The Parish of Spexhall

The parish of Spexhall is bisected by the Roman Road called Stone Street which runs along the high plateau from Halesworth to Bungay. It is more usually known by local people as the Bungay Straight or the A144. The area was clearly well populated by Romano Celts and Romans alike and it is not unusual to turn up a bit of Roman Samian ware when digging the potato patch. The parish probably takes its name from the Old English specht-halh, the place of the woodpecker. You can still hear and see green and great woodpeckers pecking at the ancient trees in the churchyard.

The village or the church are not specifically mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086) despite the fact that there was a village then. However it may be that it was still part of Wissett then, which is mentioned. Although two very different villages we are still often linked together for church and other activities.

The Church

St Peter’s is a grade 2 listed parish church of random flint with a plaintiled roof. Although we think the foundations of the church are older, the basic structure is Romanesque and dates from around 1150. Many surviving doorways in local churches such as Westhall, Wisset, Holton and Blyford are decorated with carved motifs and although Spexhall has less to show than its neighbours, its north doorway (only visible from outside) suggests that it the same age. The doorway is edged with simple carving that has been partially defaced at a later date. The “batter” of the walls inside the building, particularly the north chancel wall, is evidence of very early construction. Batter is the apparent leaning outwards, due to the wall thinning towards the top. It is an indication of the “thick-wall” technique used by Anglo-Saxon builders.

Throughout the ages, St Peter’s has undergone considerable repair and alteration. The interior especially shows the extent of the late Victorian restoration. The work undertaken at the time was reported in detail in the old church registers by the rector, the Reverend Charles Craven.

The Outside

The walls of the church are a random flint and rubble construction, with occasional pieces of ashlar from earlier windows or doorways being used to reface the wall surface. All the windows are replacements, date from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century and are in the Perpendicular style.

There is a small fourteenth century doorway under the flying buttress on the south wall towards the east. This was originally the priest’s door, giving the clergy access to the chancel without entering the nave. At the bottom right hand side of the doorway is a fragment of Romanesque “chip” carving from about 1150 that has been re-used. The flying buttress supporting the south wall was added in the restoration of 1888.

The east end of the chancel was rebuilt in 1713 as can be seen from the date near the apex of the roof on the east wall. The south east buttress bears the date 8 June 1713, church eight miles away. This is probably the date of construction although the buttress itself is a replacement of 1876. The gable wall is decorated by trellis-work or “diaper pattern” in red brick, similar to a wall in Barsham. The east window installed in 1713, was described as “a mean structure of two lights” by the Reverend Craven. It was replaced during his incumbency by the present three light window in the Victorian “Perpendicular” style. This is a fine example of Victorian stained glass depicting the Lord as the Good Shepherd, flanked by Miriam and the parable of the Widow’s mite.

The north wall is remarkable only for the oldest visible part of the Romanesque church, the damaged north doorway. It has a plain rounded arch with a simple carved design on the voussoirs, giving it its date of about 1150. Despite its simplicity and the damage it has sustained, the doorway was one of the subjects included in a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries in 1795 by William Wilkins (Archaeologia XII, 1796)

The original round tower may also have been built c1150 but could have been much older. When the foundations were laid bare during the erection of the present tower in 1911, they were declared to be “saxon” but were not properly examined or dated at the time. Whatever its original date it fell down in 1725, bringing down with it Spexhall’s three ancient bells, one of which was severely cracked in the fall. They were then hung in a bell-house in the churchyard until 1770 when the Bishop of Norwich granted a faculty allowing the parishioners to sell two of the bells, “one of which being the crack’d one”. With the money from the sale a cupola was built to house the third bell on the west ridge of the nave roof.

In 1911 the Calvert family of Spexhall Manor (long term benefactors of the church) and the parishioners built the new battlemented round tower, to be known as King Edward’s tower in memory of Edward VIII. The women and children of the parish picked flints from the fields nearby for that rebuilding. The new tower houses the remaining medieval bell. It is not possible to go up the bell tower to see it but it was cast by Brasyer of Norwich in the late fifteenth century and bears a shield incorporating a crown and three bells with the Latin inscription +Dulcis sisto mellis campa vocar Michis. A suggested translation of this is +Box of sweet honey, I am Michael’s bell.

The south porch was probably built in the fifteenth century and was restored in 1733. The date of the restoration is below the worn fifteenth century cross on the porch ridge. The porch window embrasures have interesting graffiti. Among the masons’ marks, crude crosses and different versions of IHS (Jesu salvator hominum) can be found “Ihon Browne 1658” and “R.M.1666” and two other dates, 1591 and 1666. The south doorway is probably early fourteenth century with a “hood mould”. The label stops at each end show a bishop’s head on the right and a king’s head on the left, representing church and state. On the door jambs are scratch dials.

The Inside

The nave and chancel are continuous and there is no chancel arch. The Victorian restoration has left little that is old to look at, and created a very simple space without much decoration. The roof was completely renewed in 1876 but put such a strain on the walls that the external north and south buttresses had to be added.

Inside the walls were stripped of the ancient plaster (and so presumably of any wall decoration or paintings) and the brick floor was removed and replaced with the present rather pretty Yorkshire tiles, a good 30cm above the original floor level. During the restoration a pre-Reformation (before 1547) Mass Book was found buried in the sand below the floor but the book’s whereabouts are sadly now not known.

At the same time the seventeenth and eighteenth century box pews were removed and replaced by the present seating except for a few fifteenth-century poppy-head bench ends, which have holes in their carved heads to hold a lighted taper. Those bench ends are now in the choir.

The font is octagonal, plain and perpendicular in style and there is a trace of the original paint and plaster on the north side. It has a low base, panelled shaft and quatrefoils with shields round the bowl. Originally the font would have been placed in the middle between the north and south doors but by the nineteenth century it had been moved to the north wall. It was put in its present position in 1993 when the organ was restored and moved from the chancel to the north wall.

There is a stoup for holy water by the south door on the east side. There is a small niche of unknown purpose that may also have been a stoup, by the south door on the west side, tucked behind the table at the entrance to church. There are also two piscinas, one of which on the south east wall of the nave shows the position of a previous side altar, now gone. The second, in the south wall of the sanctuary is probably fourteenth century. They both have cinquefoil cusping to the heads and chamfered jambs with broach stops. In the north nave wall, just before the chancel step, is the doorway to the rood steps, a few of which are still in place. The rood loft, built before the Reformation, has been removed.

The pulpit itself is a nineteenth century restoration, but Munro Cautley in Suffolk Churches and their Treasures suggests that the carving on the pulpit is from the Stuart period. The lectern was given on Christmas Eve, 1897, in memory of the Garrould family who attended church here for more than 300 years. The priests’ reading desk commemorates the Reverend Garforth, rector of Spexhall 1882-1916, and a veteran of the Crimean war. The reredos behind the altar was donated in memory of one of the Rider Haggard family and his brother the author who died at Passchendaele. The family lived in Ditchingham Hall near Bungay. The wooden cross behind the altar was carved in 1983 by a group of young offenders who were helping to build the village hall as part of their community sentence.

The first organ was installed in 1865. The present instrument is a nineteenth century chamber organ, with one manual made by E Kendall in 1840 for Turret Green Chapel in Ipswich. It was installed in Spexhall at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was moved to its current position and fully refurbished in 1993.

The stained glass in the east window was placed there by parishioners in memory of Queen Victoria. The north nave window opposite the south door is older, fifteenth century. It commemorates 4 local worthies through their coats of arms:

• Bacon of Baconsthorpe – In the fifteenth century, John Bacon married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Robert Banyard of Spexhall
• A damaged and incomplete glass which is thought to represent Bumpstede of Willingham
• Banyard of Spexhall. The Banyards were Lords of Banyards and Burghards Manors in Spexhall in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
• Willoughby of Parham. Margaret Graneys, a great-   grandaughter of Margaret Banyard, married the first Lord

A small fifteenth century brass shield bearing the arms of Banyard of Spexhall and Hales of Brampton has been removed at some point from the Banyards funeral slab in the north chancel and is now fixed to the west wall of the tower (in the vestry – contact a churchwarden if you wish to see it close up).

On the south wall of the nave above the priests’ prayer desk is a collection of brasses commemorating the Browne family, Lords of Burghards Manor, Spexhall in the late sixteenth century. The inscription for John Browne, d1591, has survived and also the figures of John’s wife, Maria Silvester, d1593, and their six sons or “weepers”. John Browne’s father and mother are commemorated in brass in St Mary’s Halesworth. John Browne’s daughter, Mary, d1601, was the wife of William Downing. In front of the altar is the gravestone of Sarah Downing, another one of William Downing’s several wives and nearby is the stone of George, one of William’s sons.

On the west wall on the south and north side of the tower arch are large painted wooden plaques. One has the 10 commandments on it and the other sets out the Lord’s prayer. Their age is unknown but they are understood to be victorian. On the south wall near the south door is a section of Jacobean panelling painted with a coat of arms. The table by the door against the west wall is actually an old funeral bier used by the church for many years.

The Plate

The church owns very little plate. The collection plate and altar candlesticks and cruets are nineteenth and twentieth century. The silver chalice is of Elizabethan design but bears no hall marks. The paten is small and plain, stamped with Norwich castle and lion, the orb and a third mark which is not visible.