St Matthew`s and Our Lady of Grace

In the 1960s, town planners foresaw a rise in the town's population of Ipswich towards half a million people, and so they decided to cross and encircle the existing town centre with a network of dual carriageways lined with office blocks. They didn't get very far with their plans before a halt was called, for some reason. The towering Civic Centre, police station and the Civic Drive road system were all that was left.. The Civic Centre and the police station, both which stood directly opposite this church, have since been demolished, but the four lane Civic Drive still cuts across what was the Mount residential area, the little terraces all demolished to make way for the 20th century, and separates St Matthew from the rest of the town centre.

This church is perhaps less well-known than the other working town centre churches. Partly, because it requires an effort to find it and get across to it if you are a visitor. Because of this, many people don't realise that the church contains a treasure of national importance. This is the early 16th Century font, which is quite unlike any other in Suffolk, and is perhaps unique in England.

In medieval Ipswich, St Matthew's Church was the parish church for St Matthew's Parish. It is situated in Portman Road and now has Civic Drive running past on the other (back) side.

A church was first recorded here in the 12th century, but much of the work to create the present building was carried out in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was then enlarged in phases in the 19th century during its time as the garrison church for the Ipswich barracks.

The day I visited, I was fortunate to arrive at the door as a gentleman was leaving, and he promptly escorted me around the church and gave me some insights to the building. It appears it was locked that day so I was very fortunate to arrive when I did!

The Chancel with its hammer beam roof and the Angels Bearing Shields. The Angels were in the nave roof at one point, but were moved to the current position in 1958. The other magnificent feature is the Reredos of five panels, which is a memorial to a Mary Ann Cole.

The stained glass window was a gift in 1890 by Mr George Hewitt, a successful local business man and member of the Church. He died before it was completed, but it was finished by another parishioner and unveiled on 26th April 1894.

The five panel Reredos

One of the two treasure of the sanctuary; a Jacobean Monument of around 1630

Tuning right from the Chancel you find what was once the home of the organ. It is now St Katherine`s Chapel. It has three panels in the alter rail dedicated to Rev. Ampat Thomas George, the much loved assistant Priest who died suddenly in 1975. His life in Kerala, Ethiopia and East Anglia, is marked by these three panels. It is fitting that on the Altar is the Axum Cross, an original work by unknown Ethiopian craftsman and sent as a tribute to Father George.

The Axum Cross

The window in the East on St Katherine`s Chapel. There has been some controversy since it was erected in 1853, over what the stained glass artist (Hedgeland) was actually portraying in the window! Some people suggested that the kneeling figure in the middle bottom segment was Our Lady or St Katherine, but it appears to be of Mrs Jane Gaye, to whom the window was dedicated.

However, there are Catherine Wheel motifs in the window to represent how the original St Katherine is supposed to have died.

So much English medieval Catholic iconography was destroyed by the Protestant reformers of the 16th century, and the Puritans of the 17th century. Here at St Matthew we find an even rarer survival of England's Catholic past, a font whose panels show a sequence of images of events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This is regarded as one of the dozen most important and significant medieval art survivals in Suffolk, and one of the finest late medieval fonts in England.

Believe to date from some time during the second decade of the 16th Century or even 1350 according to one expert! Of the eight panels, one has a Tudor rose and another a foliage pattern, but five of them depict events in the devotional story of Mary, mother of Jesus. These five reliefs, and a sixth of the Baptism of Christ, are amazing art objects. They show the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin with Gabriel unfurling a banner from which a dove emerges to whisper in Mary's ear; The Adoration of the Magi, with the wise men pulling a blanket away from the Blessed Virgin and child as if to symbolise their revelation to the world; the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, with Mary radiating glory in a mandala, which four angels use to convey her up to heaven in bodily form; the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven, the crowned figures of God the Father and God the Son placing a crown on the Blessed Virgin's head while the Dove of the Holy Spirit races down directly above her; and the Mother of God Enthroned, the crowned figure of the Blessed Virgin sitting on the left of and looking at (and thus paying homage to) her crowned son on the right, who is holding an orb.

Across the road (Civic Drive) from the rear of St Matthews is the above statue on the wall of Lady Lane, to mark the spot where the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace was sited.

On January 8th, 1297, a royal wedding took place in Ipswich. Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward I, married the Count of Holland. Fitch, in his annals, records that Edward I stayed in the town for the ceremony with 'a splendid court', and that the three minstrels were paid 50s each for their services. The wedding took place, not in any of the parish churches of the town, but in one of England's major shrines of Marian pilgrimage; a shrine to which we may presume Edward I had a special devotion. This was the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace, also referred to in contemporary records as Our Lady of Ipswich.
This wedding is just the earliest record we have of a royal occasion at the shrine. Thereafter, a succession of visitors come here on pilgrimage, culminating in the early 16th century, when the pilgrimage cult was at its height. Between 1517 and 1522, both Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon made journeys to the shrine, set beside the Westgate in the parish of St Matthew. Other visitors included the local dignitary Cardinal Wolsey, and the future saint Thomas More.
The fame and influence of the Ipswich shrine reached its peak in the early years of the 16th Century, after an incident known as the Miracle of the Maid of Ipswich. This occurred in 1516 and was held in renown all over England in the few short years left before the Reformation intervened. The popularity of the Miracle, in which Joan, a young Ipswich girl, has a near-death encounter and experiences visions of the Virgin Mary, was widely used by the Catholic Church as a buttress against the murmurings of reformers.

The focus of any Marian shrine would be the statue of Mary, most often with the infant Christ on her knee. When the reformers of the 16th century set out to break the hold of the Church on the imagination of the people, statues of Mary and the saints were the first things to go. 

Records indicate that (Thomas) Cromwell... caused this image of Our Lady to be pulled down from her niche, and after despoiling the effigy of its rich habilements and jewels... it was conveyed to London and destroyed. John Weever, writing a century after the event, reports that all the notable images, as the images of Our Lady of Walsingham, Ipswich, Worcester, the Lady of Wilsdon, the rood of grace of Our Lady of Boxley, and the image of the rood of St Saviour at Bermondsey, were brought up to London and burnt at Chelsey, at the commandment of the aforesaid Cromwell.

There is some evidence that the original statue of Our Lady of Grace survived, and still exists today;  A wooden statue of the Madonna and Child displayed in the local church of the Italian seaside town of Nettuno closely matches various descriptions of the Ipswich statue. The statue is known locally as "Our Lady of Grace" or "The English Lady". Radio carbon dating places the era when the tree was felled to provide the wood of which the statue is carved at circa 1280 to 1420 with 94% certainty.

There is also evidence in the Nettuno archives that a statue arrived there from Ipswich in 1550. It was classified as being in the English iconic style in 1938 by Martin Gillett, an historian of 13th century iconography. Although the statue had been altered (a throne had been replaced and the posture of the Christ child had changed), details such as the folds in the material and Christ's position on the right rather than the left knee suggest that the statue came from England.

So, It wouldn't be that improbable?  Western mainland Europe is full of statues and sculptures produced in England during the 12th and 13th centuries. Many of them must have been exported at the time; Nottingham alabaster work, for instance, was greatly prized throughout Europe. But much probably went abroad at the time of the Reformation. 

Fast forward to more modern times, in 2002 the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich was re-established, at St Mary at The Elms. (Above) The shrine is visited annually by the people of Nettuno, Italy - where the original medieval statue is now venerated.

Home