St Mary, Sisland

Here we are in that lattice of remote lanes in the area between Loddon and Bungay. You go off of the Mundham road, climbing into the gentle hills, and in winter it is hard to think that anyone might live here, scratch a daily living here. There is no Sisland village, and today there are less than a dozen houses in the parish, but on the lane that leads up to Thurton there is a cluster of bungalows and the church of St Mary. And what a curious sight it is! seen from the lane it is a thatched brick building, whitewashed except for where the windows and doors are picked out in red brick. There are heavy buttresses, which seem quite unnecessary. A wooden bell tower rises at the east end.

Going around to the north side, all is revealed. There are substantial ruins, and flint rubble in the wall. This church is built on the site of its medieval predecessor, which was destroyed by lightning on Sunday 12th July 1761 at three o'clock in the afternoon, during 'divine service', which is to say the customarily long afternoon sermon. One imagines it may have woken a few people up. The church appears to have been rebuilt almost immediately, the 1761 accounts detailing the purchase of 4000 bricks and 1100 tiles. The former north wall was reused, the south side being rebuilt, and the corners of the entrance into the north transept were kept as buttresses. The exterior is a sweet example of that century's pre-ecclesiological gothick.

Entering through the south doorway, which is neatly picked out in brick like the windows, you can't help feeling that you might have stepped into a railway carriage, the interior is so narrow. The west gallery survived the refurbishing enthusiasms of the Victorians of a century later, the roof supported by a series of iron pillars. But the most interresting survival here is the glass. Roundels depict St Peter and St Paul with their symbols of a key and a sword, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove and a sheaf of corn has the banner inscription dei providentia ('God will provide'). Again, pre-ecclesiological in style so possibly early 19th Century, which would be interesting enough, but if it dates from the time of the rebuilding (and Birkin Haward thought it did) then it is both rare and unusual. There is one single survival from the earlier building in the form of the 15th century font in the East Anglian style. Mortlock thought that the supporters on the stem were a quartet of the snootiest, nose-in-the-air lions you ever saw.

Simon Knott, November 2020

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