St Mary's church - Bungay, Suffolk
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N 52° 27.338 E 001° 26.239
31U E 393816 N 5812864
St Mary's Church, Bungay, a redundant Anglican church, recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.
Waymark Code: WM10N8C
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/01/2019
Views: 1
"The Church of St. Mary was parochial, previous to the dissolution of the nunnery, as well as conventual; and probably its handsome western front, which was built subsequently to the north aisle, formed the grand approach from the town. It is yet called 'Lady Church' by old inhabitants in the place. At the great fire in 1688 it suffered considerable damage; but the statement of the Brief that it was burnt to the ground is an exaggeration. The old benches, and possibly the font—for the present one is modern—might have been consumed, as was evidently the roof of the south aisle, which was relaid and finished in 1699; but the fine oaken roof of the nave escaped. Nor were all the bells melted in the conflagration, the writer having furnished to one of the churchwardens, some years since, a translation of the old Longobardic legends which encircled two of them, which have since been re-cast.
The interior of this edifice is light and elegant, its clerestory being supported on each side by five columns composed of clustered shafts. The want of a chancel mars the justness of its proportions very considerably; but its greatest disfigurement is a huge and ugly altar-piece. One or two ancient piscinas have lately been laid open, but their workmanship demands no especial notice. The tower, of slender but delicate proportions, stands at the west end of the south aisle, and the massy bands of iron with which its internal columns are braced together attest the injury its foundations have sustained by an injudicious grave-digger, who nearly brought it to the ground in 1790, by excavating a vault beneath its base.
The old parish book commences in 1523, and contains the churchwardens' accounts before the Dissolution. It is a very curious record, in high preservation, and some of its entries show that many popish observances were retained at Bungay long after its nunnery was stript and ruined."
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