This splendid hammer beam ceiling in St Mary's church, Earl Stonham, dates from around 1460, with hanging bosses. The figures carved under the beams had their heads hacked in either the Reformation, or later during the Commonwealth.
Between the beams is a double row of angel heads which are separated by a carved frieze.
"a most handsome piece of mediaeval woodwork, constructed in ten bays. A description of this complicated structure is probably best enumerated:
1. alternate pairs of hammerbeams are tenoned into the hammerposts from the sides, instead of supporting them in the usual way from below, so that the hammerposts can continue below the hammerbeams and terminate as carved pendants;
2. the hammerposts are arched braced to collar beams, which in turn support short king posts that rise to the ridge, and there are additional pendants hanging from the centre of the collars;
3. the hammerbeams and collars are variously castellated or brattished, and supported by arched braces with spandrels elaborately carved with leaves, flowers, beasts and grotesques;
4. the wall posts and wall plates are also finely decorated, the former with niches containing figures and the latter with angels at two levels and lattice patterning between;
5. there is openwork tracery above the hammerbeams and collars, and all timbers are moulded, including the common rafters.
Thus this is an exceptionally rich and complex piece of carpentry, that was considered by Pevsner to be “
without hesitation... the most beautiful single-hammerbeam roof in England”, which is an accolade indeed. The chancel roof has carved wall plates with open tracery running longitudinally above, and more elaborate tracery above the hammerbeams and collars. The transept roofs have simply carved wall plates, openwork tracery above the hammerbeams, and hammerposts supporting braces arched directly to the ridge. Insofar as one can tell from the ground, the N. transept roof looks entirely renewed, but the S. transept roof appears merely restored."
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