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Shipmeadow
is memorable, not least for the name. As the
village sign is at pains to point out, it is
really a corruption of sheep meadow, but
that did not dissuade the crop circle enthusiasts
of the 1970s and 1980s from noticing that it is a
close neighbour to the village of Ringsfield, and
so Ringsfield and Shipmeadow became a focus for
their investigations into a surprising number of
crop circles. It seems unlikely that the
Anglo-Saxons deliberately named their settlements
with the intention of attracting flying saucers a
thousand years later, but in any case The
X-Files came along, and consequently our
expectations of the paranormal have become a bit
more sophisiticated and demanding. Even so, I am
told that there is still one farmer in Ringsfield
who cuts a circle into his crop each year and
then lays on an ice cream van for tourists. The tower
is late, right on the eve of the Reformation, and
it stands against a church which looks rather
more of the 13th Century, although there was an
extensive 19th Century restoration. It is a good
East Anglian church on a small scale. The village
itself is not large, and straggles for a bit
along the busy Bungay to Beccles road. Seeing the
handful of houses today, it may come as some
surprise to discover that at the 1851 census,
when the population of rural East Anglia was
reaching a peak, Shipmeadow parish had 515 people
living in it. In fact, 375 of these were inmates
of the Wangford Union Workhouse which sits half a
mile or so above the road. The Rector of
Shipmeadow was also chaplain of the Workhouse,
for which he received a stipend of £45 a year,
about £9000 in today's money, not bad for a
weekly walk up the hill.
The
Rector at the time of the 1851 Census of
Religious Worship was one of the Sucklings of
Barsham, a family who oversaw the late 19th
Century Anglo-catholic revival in the Waveney
Valley. Shipmeadow church was one of their
flagships, and as at Barsham the architect for
the job was F C Eden.
| But in the 1970s, Shipmeadow
church was declared redundant. In a brief
flirtation with lunacy, the Diocese of St
Edmundsbury and Ipswich sold off about a
dozen medieval churches for conversion
into residential use, and the furnishings
were dispersed. Shipmeadow's ended up at
Barsham, Rumburgh and Claydon, among
other places. Shipmeadow
church underwent a gentle and, Pevsner's
revising editor thought, a sensitive
conversion. The current residents have
also been sympathetic. Indeed, it is hard
to tell at first sight that it is no
longer in use as a church, and the
churchyard is still accessible for those
who want to visit graves. Still in
situ is the lychgate memorial to the
parish's World War One dead, six boys who
failed to come back. The church still
stands as a sentinel on the busy road,
the graves of the Shipmeadow dead all
around, and all in all it continues to be
a touchstone to the past life of a
typical rural East Anglian parish. Worth
stopping for a look and a think for a few
moments, and then, to escape the busy
traffic, take the narrow road down to the
Waveney which heads off opposite the
church.
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