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This elegant
building is somewhat overshadowed by its
three more famous neighbours, Blythburgh,
Westhall and Wenhaston. But I have a soft
spot for it; partly because it was one of
the first Suffolk churches I ever
properly explored, on an ambitious walk
about ten years ago. But mainly, because
it is rather lovely. The church sits at a
sharp bend in the Halesworth to
Blythburgh road, a familiar landmark.
There's a decent pub across the road, the
Queen's Head. The sign shows St
Etheldreda; her father, King Anna, was
killed in the Battle of Blythburgh near
here, and the church there had shrines to
both Anna and Etheldreda until the
Reformation. You
walk up to the church from the corner of
the Wenhaston road, and just inside the
gate here is a gravestone to Samuel
Croft, who died at the age of 21 in 1849.
His headstone depicts a team of two
draught horses leading a plough, a
remarkable survival. There are several
other interesting gravestones and
inscriptions. The grand south porch could
only be in Suffolk, and its 15th century
flushwork confectionery guards an austere
Norman doorway. There's another one
around on the north side. It is the south
doorway you step through, and like all
churches around here All Saints is open
to visitors every day.
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When I first came here,
some twenty years ago, I'd found the interior
rather shabby, but on more recent visits it has
been beautifully kept, clean, bright and white.
On this occasion I stepped inside to find two
rather disappointed ladies. "Do you know
what has happened to the wall painting?" one
of them asked. It took me a moment to work out
what she meant - they thought they had found
Wenhaston church, which lies about half a mile to
the south, and where there is a fabulous doom
painting, actually on a tympanum rather than the
wall. I pointed them in the right direction, and
settled down to enjoy the silence. To be sure,
this is not one of the county's most exciting
churches, but it is a pleasing spot to stay and
sit a while. There is a banner stave locker in
the south west corner of the nave. In this part
of Suffolk they are common enough, but this is
the only one I know that has been returned to its
original usage. Several of the others are used
for storing hymn books and cleaning equipment;
the one at nearby Wenhaston has an ugly modern
door. They all probably had doors originally.
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curiosity propped up behind the pulpit.
It is the original World War One Flanders
cross for Walter Evan Day, sent back to
his family when the Empire War Graves
Commission replaced it with a permanent
memorial. However, Walter Day is not
mentioned on the Blyford parish war
memorial, or even on the Roll of Honour
of those who fought, and appears to have
no connection with Blyford. He was a
Captain in the Royal Engineers, and was
the son of Richard Evan and Edith Emma
Day, of Plaistow Lane, Bromley, Kent. He
was aged 31 when he died. He is buried at
the Tancrez Farm Cemetery in Belgium. The font is a good, plain
13th century octagon, and there is a
sedilia set up in the sanctuary, with its
piscina in a corner above it. In the
porch, books and plants were on sale, as
they were when I visited all those years
ago, and all in all there was a pleasing
sense of continuity. On an earlier
version of this entry I expressed my
disappointment that the visitors book has
been replaced, as I was looking forward
to finding evidence of my previous visits
(I had recently found my name in a
visitors book in a Cambridge church,
written as a child a quarter of a century
before). But Blyford, being open, and
welcoming, and a pleasure to visit, fills
its visitors books far more quickly than
churches where visitors are the exception
rather than the rule. And if it seems a
quiet, ordinary place compared with its
neighbours, then all the more reason for
those visiting them to stop by here as
well, and have a bit of a wallow in its
simplicity.
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Simon Knott, October 2008
 
  
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