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Victorian-looking
St Andrew, but there is more to it than meets the
eye. The lancets are probably 19th
century, for instance. But they may have been
reset.
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The church looks
substantially rebuilt in the 19th century, and
the south aisle dates
from 1887.
But, like Campsea Ash, the rest of the church was refaced in
flint rather than rebuilt, and is still basically
all of a 14th century piece. Apart from the east
wall, the chancel shows this particularly well.
The porch is later, slightly
pre-Reformation. A modern, Essex-style spire sits
on the tower.
I wandered around the sanitised
churchyard. Great Cornard can never have been a
particularly remote village. Ten minutes walk
from here brings you into the centre of Sudbury,
and it must be several centuries since there were
any fields between them.
This is the main road from
Sudbury to Bures, and
would once have been the road to Colchester. In
the 1950s, Cornard was designated a
London-overspill estate, and that is why the most
common accent heard in the streets of Sudbury is
cockney rather than Suffolk.
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| The parish has a population of
well over eight thousand, and is wholly urban in
character; its clusters and rows of 1960s housing
are arranged off several spine roads, on closes
named after Suffolk villages. Like all urban estates, it has its
problems with drugs and crime, and is a world
away from its twin in name only, Little
Cornard; but the
churchyard of St Andrew is a peaceful place
enough, still in proximity to an inn across the
road, as it must have been for centuries.
The Bures road cuts down right
beside it; there is only just room between the
west side of the tower and the churchyard wall to
pass.
From the road, you can see the
niches that flank the west window. Here
travellers must have stopped to say a prayer or
two, before heading on to the real wilds of the
Suffolk/Essex borderlands.
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The top
of the 16th Century brick stair turret beside the
14th century tower, a rather lovely
juxtaposition.
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One wonders what images they held; it
was probably Mary and Andrew, but may have been a patron
saint of travellers. They were certainly destroyed in the
1540s by the Anglican reformers.
Whatever else has happened here, the
parish has one thing in particular to be proud of - this
is one of the four Suffolk parishes that stood up to Dowsing. In 1644, the churchwarden refused to pay him
for his destruction, which put the old curmudgeon's nose
out of joint, as you may imagine.
Western
niches overlooking the main road.
I would dearly have loved to see
inside; Mortlock, a man of
taste in these matters, considers the modern window of
the Parable of the Sower one of the best of its kind in
all Suffolk. Sadly, this was not to be; but I hope to get
back there now it is accessible.
St Andrew, Great
Cornard, is situated near to the centre of Sudbury, about
ten minutes walk along Cornard Road from St Peter in the
Market Square.
Anthony Higgins
writes: Dear Simon, Your page for this church is quite
out of date. The key to the church is generally
accessable from the vicarage, a little further along the
road. Yours Sincerely, Anthony
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