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Uniquely in East
Anglia, Dallinghoo church has its tower at the east end.
Is this because it was built back to front? Well, no.
What you see now are the remains of a church with a
central tower. The chancel has gone, and there never were
any transepts. So just the nave survives, with a tower at
the eastern end rather than the west. This puts the porch
in the right place after all, and as you step through
into the body of the nave and look east, you would never
notice the difference, except I do not think I could
stand in that sanctuary without being conscious of the
colossal weight above me.
The inside is bright, neat and thoroughly Anglican. The
makeshift chancel beneath the tower is largely 17th
century in character and the holy table, chairs and
panelling are all of a piece, even though most have been
reused from elsewhere. It is probably the best example of
a Jacobean chancel in the county. The communion rails are
slightly later, but in any case they are put in the shade
by the amazing 17th century pulpit in the north aisle. It
is the tallest in the county, and dwarfs the huge reading
desk in front of it. Carved into its back is a set of
royal arms. Now, you might expect them to be Jacobean,
probably for Charles I or Charles II, but in fact they
are older, and for Henry VIII. Almost certainly, this
means that the pulpit was cobbled together using older
materials.
Outside in the graveyard are a number of interesting
stones, including one from the late 17th Century
depicting a shovel, hour glass and pick which must be by
the same mason as the similar one a few miles off at
Burgh. There is also a very satisfactory grinning King
Death on a nearby stone of similar date. Even more
striking is the life-size statue of Hope against the
north boundary. It commemorates the Walford family, who
provided rectors in the middle years of the 19th century.
The Reverend Ellis Walford, who was rector at the time of
the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, must have been
pleased to be able to record a congregation of more than
a hundred on the day of the census, a surprisingly high
proportion for enthusiastically non-conformist east
Suffolk out of the parish population of just 385,
especially as Dallinghoo had a large number of Baptists
who attended the chapel up the road in Charsfield. But
before we congratulate him too much, it should be pointed
out that Ellis Walford was one of Suffolk's last
pluralist ministers, also having the living of Bucklesham
on the other side of Woodbridge, a parish he had left so
moribund that no one could be found there to fill in the
census return.
Simon
Knott, February 2020
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