St Edmunds Church, Southwold

Several of these next images were taken on a previous visit but I had forgotten to put them together, so here goes!

Starting with a shot of the whole church. The parish church of Southwold is dedicated to St Edmund, and is considered to be one of Suffolk's finest. It lies under one continuous roof, and was built over about 60 years from the 1430s to the 1490s; it replaced a smaller 13th-century church that was destroyed by fire. The earlier church dated from the time when Southwold was a small fishing hamlet adjacent to the larger Reydon. By the 15th century Southwold was an important town in its own right, and the church was rebuilt to match its power and wealth.

The church is renowned for its East Anglian flushwork, especially that of the tower. Knapped and unknapped flints are arranged in patterns, textures and designs and create the stone work. You live and learn!

The rood screen is considered by many to be the finest in the county. It stretches all the way across the church, and is made up of three separate screens: a rood screen across the chancel arch and parclose screens across the north and south chancel aisles

One of the screens.

All of the church's medieval glass was destroyed by William Dowsing in 1644; the only stained glass windows in the church are the east windows over the altar (1954, by Sir Ninian Comper) and the west window below the grand tower. In World War II the church was narrowly missed by a German bomb that destroyed houses in the nearby Hollyhock Square. The bomb did not do much damage to the building itself but blew out most of the windows - another reason why the church has very little stained glass.

The roof in the chancel is painted and its height gives the church a very open feeling. The roofs were restored in 1857 by Edward Lushington Blackburne and in 1866-1867 by Richard Phipson.

Ornate, but not liked by everybody. I quite like it.

The reredos is by Benedict Williamson - Benedict Williamson (1868–1948) was an architect who designed many Romanesque Revival churches in the United Kingdom who later became a Roman Catholic priest.

A 15th century clock jack stands at the west end. He has an axe and bell which he uses to strike the time, and has a twin at Blythburgh. The Southwold jack is named "Southwold Jack", and is one of the symbols of the Adnams brewery. I had seen the Adnams one but didn`t connect them!

The font has been badly mutilated in the past but is still very impressive with its modern, but large ornate cover.

The two storey south porch has 'M' for St Mary picked out on the lower panels. Above the door, framed by two windows, is a modern statue of St Edmund, shown bound in the ropes that tied him to a tree while he was used by Danish archers as a target.

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Southwold and Dunwich

Southwold is a lovely coastal town I have visited before but never fully explored. So when a family holiday was proposed, I looked forward to finding out some details and obviouly some photos.

Southwold was mentioned in Domesday Book (1086) as a fishing port. It received its town charter from Henry VII in 1489. The grant of the charter is still marked by the annual Trinity Fair, when it is read out by the Town Clerk. As a town its fortune was directly linked to the neighbouring town of Dunwich, which we also visited during our weeks stay in Southwold.

Gun Hill Green - one of the many `greens` around Southwold.

Nearby Dunwich had, by the thirteenth century, become one of the greatest east coast ports in England and one of the ten largest towns in the country. Its wealth was derived from trade, shipbuilding and the town’s large fishing fleet, due to the large harbour, the “Kings Fleet”, which was sheltered behind a shingle spit extending south from Southwold. However, the east coast was struck by three major storms in 1286 – 87, which extended the spit to block the harbour mouth. This spelled the beginning of the end for Dunwich and the beginning of the rise of Southwold. In 1328, another huge storm struck the Suffolk coast causing the coastal shingle bed to shift. It washed away a significant part of Dunwich town, causing great loss of life and blocking off its harbour completely. Further storms followed in 1347 and 1362. Helped by Southwold and neighbouring Walberswick residents, the Blyth and Dunwich rivers were diverted through a new cut across the shingle spit, north of Dunwich. In parallel to Dunwich’s decline, Southwold began a steady rise in status and in its economy, aided further by a Royal Charter in in 1490 granting them the right to provide safe haven for the King’s ships.

Another major event for Southwold occured on 25th April 1659 when a huge fire devastated the town. It`s economic fortunes fell in 1659 when a fire destroyed most of the town in the space of four hours. The Town Hall and the town records it contained, the market place, prison, shops, granaries and warehouses all went. Three hundred families were made homeless. Many people remained destitute for years, despite charitable donations from all over the country. The town’s famous greens are evidence of early town planning designed to prevent the spread of fire in the future, Gun Hill Green above being an example.

A walk to the south side of Southwold past the beach huts and glorious Foxgloves and arriving at the old harbour area looking across to Walberswick (below)

The ferry point.

On the walk back we saw beautiful stormy skies as above, and of course, more beach huts!

Designed by John Bennett, the award-winning building is owned and run by the Southwold Film Society, a charitable Trust committed to the educational value of film. The primary aim is to recapture the experience of cinema-going in the mid twentieth century, acknowledging that the activity is not just about seeing a film but recognising also that the personnel, environment and programming have an equally important part to play in terms of a “good night out”.  So you will find a commissionaire outside, usherettes, a front of house manager in a DJ, and a “Tiny Wurlitzer” organ rising up mysteriously during the interval.  The National Anthem is played at the end. Brilliant!

Construction of Southwold Lighthouse began in 1887 under the supervision of Sir James Douglass, Engineer in Chief to Trinity House. The lighthouse replaced three local lighthouses which were under threat from severe coastal erosion at Orfordness to the south. While the masonry tower was built a temporary light was shown from a wooden structure which was first lit on 19 February 1889.

The present lighthouse came into operation on 3 September 1890. The light was originally provided by an Argand burner, this was replaced by a Matthews incandescent oil burner in 1906. A Hood 100mm petroleum vapour burner was installed in 1923 and remained until the station was electrified and demanned in 1938. The character and range of Southwold lighthouse were changed in December 2012 with the main light being increased from 17 to 24 Nautical Miles in advance of the decommissioning of Orfordness Lighthouse.

The Southwold Sailors’ Reading Room was built in 1864 as a refuge for fishermen and mariners when not engaged at sea, as an endeavour to keep them out of the pubs and encourage them in Christian ideals.

Displays of a seafaring nature line the walls and fill glass cabinets. Pictures and portraits of local fishermen and seascapes, model ships and maritime paraphernalia offer a fascinating history of Southwold’s connections with the sea.

So next, a walk in Dunwich, which is a fascinating place I always think. I guess its history (above) is the trigger for that feeling.

We walked through Greyfrirs Wood ….

…… past the beautiful Foxgloves ….

 ….. through the ruins of Greyfriars abbey ….

…. Until we came to a solitary grave stone. As it tuns out, the huge collapses of the Dunwich coast and town have left just this last grave stone from the Church. No doubt, coastal erosion will continue in the coming decades and even this, and the ruins will disappear under the sea.

We then walked across the heathlands and finished with a deserved coffee and cake in the coastguarde cottage tearooms.

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Sizewell - Beauty and the Beast

When I think of Sizewell on the Suffolk coast, my mind immediately jumps to Nuclear power stations, and conjours up all sorts of negative thoughts surroundng them.

There is another side to Sizewell and these are a few images to illustrate the beauty all around.

The beach is like a lot of the surrounding area - shingle. Not easy to walk a great distance on. There are a lot of boats on the beach and I picked just this one out with the two offshore platforms in the background. 

The platforms (now defunct) were there to service the intake and discharge tunnels used to run sea water through the cooling system. The cold water inlet was the farthest platform and the hot water outlet was the nearest platform.

Taken on a previous visit when the sea was not so calm.

I named this image `layers` as it appears to be in layers of colours.

One of the dominant colours was yellow - yellow gorse everywhere, and the perfume was gorgeous.

I had to include  `the Beast` - Sizewll B. The new C reactor is underway but there is a long way to go before it comes online. 

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The three Marys - local churches

Raydon - St Mary

This is a church, local to where I live, that I had not explored at all in the past. One of the reasons I decided to start here today was that a local man had just finished carving a font cover and I wanted to have a look. However, starting on the exterior, it becomes obvious that it has no tower which I soon discovered had collapsed in the 17th century, possibly during the great storm of September 1658, when a couple of other Suffolk steeples came down. It has been replaced by a little bell turret, but apart from this the church is all of an early 13th century piece.

Side (south) view of the church with the small bell turrett on the left (west) end with the pyramid roof. I read that the 2 foot 6 inch thick walls of the church are constructed of flint and rubble, with plaster rendering. Caen stone is used for windows, buttresses and doorways.

As you approach the east end of the church while walking the footpath toward it, you will see a large 19th century window flanked by two fine buttresses terminating in richly traceried octagonal shafts, with pinnacled and crocketted finials. These were restored in 1983 by the sculptor Bert Gale. 

South side wooden porch

The Victorian pews in the nave are made of oak, replacing the Georgian hardwood box pews in the restoration of 1883. Part of the old box pews were used to panel in the bottom of the Victorian pews.

So to the font cover crafted by a local man who has a great reputation for his working skills and has worked on places like Windsor Castle after the fire of November 1992.

In December 2023 `A Suffolk church has unveiled a painting of King Charles III’s new coat of arms, believed to be one of the first in the country to do so. The mural was revealed in a special service by Judge John Devaux at St Mary’s Church in Raydon` - according to the local news.

So, not too altered by the Victorians, as many churches are. Then onto -