St Mary, Bedingfield

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Interestingly, a century later in 1476 Robert Pakke left 26s 8d to the reparation and emendation of the lead (which is to say on the roof) of Bedingfield church, and then in 1517 Robert Wolrlysch left the considerable sum of 20 marks to the church of Bedingfield for the roofing thereof or else to such thing as is most need to the same church. These two dates seem too far apart for bequests to the work, unless of course there was a recurring problem. There are no aisles or clerestories, but the nave is quite wide and the hammerbeam roof is more rustic than some. Perhaps they had trouble getting it right. You enter through that late 14th Century porch with its large buttresses, and the nave at first feels all of its 19th Century restoration, with tiled floors and coloured glass. But this is a setting for a delicious range of early 17th Century benches with scrollworked bench ends that feel almost a conscious echo of the more familiar poppyheads of a century or so earlier.

One of the benches is carved with the name B Bond, presumably a churchwarden, and another the date 1612. It's easy to imagine the long generations of Bedingfielders crowding into them. In addition, there are some mutilated late medieval bench ends towards the west of the nave. One of them appears to be a man kneeling and counting money, in which case he is probably representing Greed from the Seven Deadly Sins sequence as at nearby Wilby. Another appears to be a seated angel holding a scroll. There's not much else from the church's pre-Reformation days, but the font is an elegant Perpendicular bowl, perhaps part of the late 14th Century renewal here.

The earliest of the glass appears to just predate the 19th Century restoration, and perhaps was the catalyst for it. This is the east window which was paid for by the wealthy and locally significant Bedingfield family. It depicts St John, St Helen and St James and remembers John James Bedingfield who died in 1851. Birkin Haward credits it to the workshop of William Miller, and he thought the other chancel glass, also remembering members of the Bedingfield family, might also be his, although as Haward tells us elsewhere that Miller died in 1856 that seems unlikely, for the glass postdates this. The depiction of St Longinus remembers William Bedingfield who died in the 1870s, and is curiously pre-ecclesiological and naive for such a late date. William Taylor's 1881 standard depiction of Charity may be a clue, for Taylor had recently taken over the firm of O'Connor, and the other glass is not unlike their style.

More memorable perhaps is the 1929 glass in the nave by William Morris of Westminster. It remembers Victoria Shaw, and under a typical Annunciation scene the inscription tells us that it was given by members of the Mothers Union, GFS and other women workers of the diocese. The GFS was the Girls Friendly Society, an early 20th Century church society for girls away from home in service. Even middle class families might keep a maid in the years before the First World War, and there were many branches in rural East Anglia.