The
church (seen left,
from the southeast) is attractively situated along a quiet country lane, less than three
miles from the centre of Diss, and consists of a W. tower, a nave with
embattled aisles and porches, and a chancel with a mediaeval N. vestry that
seems once to have been two-storeyed. It is a building that reveals a
different history inside from that which appears without, for while,
externally, everything is very neat and trim, here it is entirely
Perpendicular in style, with many renewed or restored features. The
parts of the building that seem to have been least altered or repaired down
the centuries, are the tower and
nave clerestory. The tower has a basal frieze of flint flushwork (although
actually it is about 4 feet up from the ground) and rises
in three stages, of which the first is by far the tallest. A
projection at the east end of the N. wall houses the stair to the ringing
chamber, the bell-openings have strong mullions and stepped supertransoms
resting on the stepped lights, and the bell-stage is surmounted by tall
stepped battlements faced in flushwork and by crocketed pinnacles at the
corners. The three-light W. window in the first stage, rests on
another flushwork frieze that includes three shields and an inscription. The windows
in the nave aisles are an
assortment but all include at least a little supermullioned tracery above
the lights, and one window each to the north and south displays a little linking subarcuation above and
between the lights, like those to be seen at a number of churches in the
middle of the county, around
Brettenham, Hitcham,
Preston St. Mary,
Rattlesden and,
perhaps most importantly,
Stowlangtoft, where the work appears to be dateable to c.
1390. (See the entry for St. Mary's, Brettenham
for a full description of this small but distinctive tracery shape.) The
windowless N. porch projects only slightly beyond the aisle and now appears largely
nineteenth century in date. The S. porch outer doorway carries
a series of wave mouldings arranged in two orders, of which those on the
inner order die into a flat chamfer running down the responds. The
attractive clerestory consists of four, two-light windows on each side,
with supermullioned drop tracery beneath triangular-pointed arches,
trefoil-cusped sublights, and cinquefoil-cusped lights. The chancel windows
are two-light and square-headed with renewed supermullioned
tracery to north and south, and three-light and segmental-pointed with
strong mullions to the east.
However,
the same windows inside (in the chancel walls to north, south and east) retain an original order of
Early English colonnettes at the sides, supporting roll mouldings around the
arches above, and so appear scarcely later than c. 1290 - 1300.
(See the S. window, illustrated
right.) If construction of
the
church began with the chancel, therefore (as was often the case), then
perhaps there was a break in proceedings after it was completed, for not
only are the nave arcades consistent with early fourteenth century Decorated
work, being composed of double-flat-chamfered arches supported on octagonal
piers with characteristically prominent capitals
(as seen in the photograph of the
S. arcade, left), but the alignment of either
the nave or the chancel, as viewed from the
other, is sharply southwards. The traditional explanation
for such an arrangement is that it is intended to symbolize Christ’s
drooping head after his death on he Cross, though nearly all can probably be
explained by the difficulties encountered in laying out of the foundations
(albeit that it
must be admitted that northward-deflections are rare). The change of
alignment at Thrandeston is exceptionally pronounced - in the order of 10°
to 15° - and seems most
unlikely
to have been intended at the outset, raising such questions as whether a
decision to make the nave longer than originally planned, could have
meant that burials or other obstacles prevented work continuing along the
original building line. Be this as it may, however, the chancel arch
does rather span the transition between the
Early
English and Decorated styles, for while it is similar to the nave arcades in
basic form (with two flat chamfered orders above
semi-octagonal responds),
the capitals are enriched with leaf and vine carving which is
thirteenth century in spirit.
(See the capital to the N. respond, right.)
The tower arch consists of two flat-chamfered orders that die into the jambs
while other masonry features include a Decorated
piscina in the S. wall of the S. aisle, a blocked rood stair beside the E.
respond to the N. arcade, and a trefoiled ogee niche for a statue in the N.
wall of the N. aisle. The octagonal font
(illustrated left)
has carved roses alternating with the symbols of the Evangelists on the
faces of the bowl, and four very jolly lion supporters between buttresses
round the stem, with frog-like back legs. It is one of a number in
this region aligned to face east-northeast, east-southeast, south-southeast,
etc., rather than the more usual cardinal and ordinal directions.
Finally, a few items of woodwork should be
mentioned, especially the chancel benches, of which there is a long one on
the N. side
(illustrated below) and a
shorter one to the south. These have tracery on the back and
front panels of late fifteenth or sixteenth century appearance, but also -
on the back panel of the N. bench, behind the gangway - a Jacobean round
arch, suggesting either that the correct date is the seventeenth
century or, at the least, that the work was altered then. There are
also two tall carved figures rising from the front panel on either side of
this gangway, carrying a dog and a bird. The rood screen consists of two
one-light divisions on each side of the central opening, with supermullioned
tracery above and a carved dado below; the central opening has two traceried
lights above, again with supermullioned tracery. Many of the nave
benches appear to have old work re-used in them.
