St Mary's in Badley, is one of Suffolk's most remarkable medieval churches - its setting and unmodernised interior give an atmosphere of great peace and stillness. To discover its charm, you must begin with a journey - a mile's walk or drive down a rutted track across Suffolk farmland, to a small valley of trees and birdsong. The flint-and-brick church has nothing for company but a sixteenth-century farmhouse and the wildlife of its pretty churchyard. Passing through the sturdy medieval door with its iron grille, you step into a time capsule - a church scarcely changed for 300 years with plain walls and a brick floor set with memorials to the Poleys, once owners of the house nearby. The seventeenth/eighteenth-century arrangement of the pews, which incorporates Medieval benches, combined with fragments of a screen with seventeenth-century panelling, where the oak is silvery-grey with age, make an extraordinary ensemble. The day I chose to visit was rather dull and damp so the images suffered, but hopefully convey what I saw in this isolated church.
Badley`s St Mary's Church as you approach. The first thing of note is the tower which is of flint and brick rubble, with the belfry stage rebuilt in C16 orange brick. It was placed on top of the west end of the nave in C15. The church itself is mainly C15, with parts being c.1200 or earlier - quite old!
The church fell out of use in the 1980s, and is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. But it hasn't always been loved. The iconoclast William Dowsing came this way on the morning of Monday, February 5th 1644. Dowsing had a house nearby at Baylham. It was the last full day of his first tour of Suffolk, and he was probably in a bad mood - certainly, he seems to have been only just realising the enormity of his task, and this was the week he appointed the brutish and scheming Thomas Denny as his deputy. Dowsing found an ally here at Badley in William Dove, the principal landowner and churchwarden. Dowsing himself had about half of the stained glass broken down, but he trusted Dove to get rid of the rest. He also charged him with the task of lowering of the chancel steps which had been raised by order of Archbishop Laud a decade or so before. No old glass survives, and the chancel steps were never to be made high again.
The overgrown, grassed path, leads to a little wooden porch, with a drop-gate to keep out animals.
The door into the church has a metal grill set in it, and this all seems original too, or 18th century at the latest. Through this grill, you can peep at the remarkable interior.
On the south outer side of the church and blocking the outer face of a C14 window, is a monument to Henrietta Robins (d.1728). Heritage crime continues to be a problem in all churches. Lead is taken from church roofs; monuments are vandalised. Perhaps even more concerning is the possibility of theft to order. This church of St Mary has been the victim of this. A large carved stone shield from the memorial of Henrietta Robins (d.1728) a lawyer’s wife from Battlesden in Bedfordshire, was stolen from the above monument and it is suspected that this was done to order.
And then for the interior! It is essentially an untouched 18th century interior, with barely a sign of Victorian enthusiasm. The benches and box pews are bleached white by centuries of Suffolk air and sunlight, and flooded with sunshine by the remarkably large five-light west window. The tiled floor spreads, punctuated by ledger stones and brass inscriptions, and the whole piece is heartachingly rustic.
The box-pews, dating from the 17th century, were occupied by the more wealthy families who could afford to rent them. Those east of the screen are embellished with knobs and were used by the Lords of the Manor and the important families who sat in the chancel. Characteristic Jacobean carving can be seen on the pew entrance opposite the pulpit and there is more on the entrance to the reading desk and pulpit. The reading desk is commodious, although the pulpit is remarkably small. They were both equipped with red cushions and hangings, which had rotted and were removed earlier this century
Notable is an absence of the 17th-century communion rails which one would expect to find here; it seems that either they disappeared very early or that there never were any. The present iron rails were probable erected in the 19th century (Pevsner dates them c.1830).
The small octagonal font, standing upon its raised step, has shallow arches in its Purbeck marble bowl, indicating work of the 13th century. Its present cover may well be 18th century, but in the stonework of the bowl are traces of the device by which its mediaeval predecessor was locked to the font.
One of several mentions of the Poley family here on the floor of the nave. The grave of a Thomas Poley who amongst other political positions, was once Ipswich MP.
One of the attractions for me was the fine selection of oak furnishings of various dates, but untouched since C18. There is a set of 5 and three sets of 4 benches, one C15 example having carved animals on the buttresses. Most others are of C16, the whole augmented and rearranged in C17. So the Victorians didn't get to this one!
One of the only other 19th-century feature is the stained glass in the east window.
This is a really special church to visit, not for its size or spectacular artifacts, but for its preservation of a piece of life from a bygone age.
