In Search of Some Saints (C#25)
Monday 25 July, 104 Miles
After yesterday’s
outing I felt the urge to repeat the experience. In fact, quite literally
because for part of today’s ride I rode along a stretch of yesterday’s Sportive course – which I had also ridden twice yesterday. Still with me? Well it doesn’t
really matter if you are or not.
Today’s objective was to explore the South
Elmham villages which lie south west of Bungay and above the Waveney valley.
Well I say “above” but altitude is a notional concept in Suffolk. The River
Waveney lies at an altitude of about 20 feet hereabouts and the highest of the villages
is at 145 feet. This part of Suffolk is often called ‘Saints Country’ as there
are several villages each named after a saint, that of their parish church. There
are twelve saintly villages: All Saints, St Andrew, St Cross, St James, St
John, St Lawrence, St Margaret (South Elmham), St Margaret (Ilketshall), St
Mary, St Michael, St Nicholas and St Peter.
Here’s what the
Suffolk Churches website has to say about them:
“The
churches of the Saints have a subtle charm, one that is not at all apparent to
some people. Here, there are no famous monuments, no historic rood screens and
few other medieval survivals. Fragments are scattered; an Easter Sepulchre and
dado panels at St Margaret, the castellated roof brace that must have been part
of the canopy of honour at St John, the bells at St Peter. There is also the
ruin of what is usually referred to as South Elmham Minster,
a church in the woods in the parish of St Cross, half a mile from the nearest
road. It is an amazing place, set in the middle of an ancient, possibly Roman,
fortification. It was probably not a Minster, but its origins are shrouded in
mystery.
Apart
from the churches, there are only two buildings of note; these are South Elmham
Hall in the parish of St Cross, part of the former summer retreat of the
Bishops of Norwich, and St Peter's Hall, former home of the Tasburghs, a local
landed family, in the parish of St Peter. The beauty of the Saints is in their
bleakness, their remoteness. There are no shops, no pubs. Only three of them
have proper villages at all. Instead, we find scatterings of modest farmsteads,
19th century cottages, farmworkers' council houses. And entirely rural village
churches, of which only one, incredibly, has been made redundant. There is
something trainspotterish about visiting them all.
By my reckoning
I managed to ride past or at least see in the distance seven of the churches.
So I’ll have to return to bag the set though that might involve a sport of
walking.
One thing that
did strike me about this area is that it has seemed to encapsulate almost every
type of countryside that Suffolk has to offer, with the exception of the Breckland
heaths and the manicured horsiculture of Newmarket. The Suffolk Churches
website refers to the area as wide, remote, scattered and traditionally
lawless. I could certainly appreciate the first three descriptions. As to the lawlessness
I can only assume that with so many churches in such a relatively small area
there must have been a lot of sinners looking to repent.