Decoding a Church's Catholic Past -

All Saints Church at Icklingham is one of two churches in this Suffolk village and this fact has been this building's salvation. The other church, St James, is more in the centre of things and received a thoroughgoing Victorian restoration, while All Saints, little used for centuries and sitting on a little knoll alone at one end of the village, was simply left to be. By the end of the 19th century the church was nearly ruinous. The church is still thatched like many East Anglian churches once were and the sum total of restoration was some gentle conservation and re-thatching in 1903, the work paid for in part by Edward Guinness of brewery fame who lived at nearby Elveden Hall. You approach the church, made as usual in these parts primarily from Flint, but you enter via the north door. As you enter a couple of blocked Norman windows give away that the fabric of the nave is essentially 12th century, although the majority of the fabric you see outside and inside is 13th and early 14th century. So let's step through that north door and go and have a look inside. Now as far as I'm concerned this church gets an A star in the atmosphere stakes, it has a wonderful feel to it. I think that's partly to do with the great breadth of the building and it's also flooded with light, but also the uncluttered feel to it and wherever you turn there's something of interest to see. Well let's just begin for example with the centre of the nave here and on either side of the aisle you've got sets of 15th and early 16th century benches. Some of these on the north side are without backs which was a common type in East Anglia in the early 16th century. Sometime in the first half of the 14th century this great space, a grand new south aisle was added to the nave. Indeed this aisle is just as wide as the nave itself and at the west end of this aisle was constructed the present west tower. The east wall of this aisle is filled with an enormous 14th century window which is embellished with what is called reticulated or net-like tracery, a form of window tracery that was common in the 1330s and 1340s. There must have been a rather large grand side altar placed under this window and on either side of the window are two vast canopied niches, what our medieval ancestors would have called tabernacles, which once contained images of the saints to which this altar was presumably dedicated. Although the niches survive, the images which would have been a focus of devotion no doubt went at the time of the reformation. Some remnants of the original early 14th century glass survives in this aisle. Look at these two figures here, figures of apostles under towering architectural canopies. It seems counterintuitive that glass with images of the saints survives the reformation while three-dimensional images do not, but that has a lot to do with how these different works of art functioned. Images and glass were never the focus of devotional action like statues of the saints. Tudor people were also pragmatic. It is one thing to destroy a statue, as doing that incurs no cost, but it's quite another to destroy acres of perfectly functional glazing. It was an exceptional parish who could afford to replace its glazing all in one go if it was destroyed. There are a good number of fragments of 14th century glass dotted around this lovely church which gives a sense of the colour and vibrancy of this interior when it was first completed in the middle of the 14th century. Another wonderful survival is this partition, timber partition, which divides the nave from the chancel and it's under the chancel arch. This is the remains of the rood screen. All we have here is the dado, the lower tier of the screen, and you must imagine that originally there were uprights rising from here which have since been cut off which would have at one point supported a rood which would have run right across the top of the chancel arch and above that before the reformation would have been the great rood cross, the principal image of devotion in the church which was taken away in the 1540s. Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted already that there are little holes pierced in the dado of this rood screen but what are these? Well these too are a survival of pre-reformation devotion. They're called elevation squints. Now the high point of the mass in medieval England was a ceremony called the Elevation of the Host when the host, the body of Christ, was lifted above the priest's head at the altar so that the people could see it. Now at this moment during the liturgy of the mass the people were all on their knees, they were kneeling, but they still needed to see and those who are closest to the screen here had their view obstructed by the dado of the screen and so these little squints were drilled through the dado so that the people kneeling here could still see Christ elevated at the altar by the priest. Now just to the south of the rood screen is this set of stairs. I'm not going to go up it because there's a sign that says no access beyond this point and for once I'm going to be obedient but this is the rood stairs and it originally led up to the rood loft which ran across the top of the screen and this gave access to the rood light, the lamp that was hanging in front of the great rood that dominated the church interior. Into the chancel which is 13th and 14th century once again and ahead of us is a delightful altar rail with barley twist and balusters. This dates from the late 17th century and is a reminder that after the reformation this church continued in use by the population in Icklingham with 17th century people worshipping among the tattered relics of the medieval past. Another unexpected survival here is that great swathes of the medieval floor of the chancel remain, particularly laid on the steps which support the high altar at the east end. It's very unusual to see such a large collection of encaustic tiles in a medieval parish church. Many of these are what are known as opus sectile or cutwork tiles which are laid in various geometric patterns. Others have pressed or incised motifs of animals and other devices on them. These tiles are very much weathered but when first laid would have been a vibrant display of yellow, red and green glaze. As well as the original tile flooring surviving here there are other important furnishings from the middle ages. The sill of the window on this side has been let down and that's in order to put in place something that's called a sidilia which is where the clergy would have sat during mass. And then on this side is a piscina which is a liturgical sink which has a drain hole in the bottom of it which is used by the priest at mass to wash the sacred vessels and also to wash their hands at the ablutions. And all of this furniture is 13th century. We can tell that by this trefoil arch above the piscina. Now sat here in the sidilia up above me in the windows are remains of again 14th century glazing. Here are figures of apostles that are set under canopies against delicate foliage backgrounds with lovely spread eagles in the border. The heads of all the saints have been replaced. The originals may have been a victim of half-hearted iconoclasm at some point. A balance between ideology and pragmatism is often evident in English iconoclasm. The English iconoclasts of the Reformation period were not of the full-blooded continental variety. Among the stained-glass array here is one shield. It is that of the Crouchback Earls of Lancaster, descendants of King Henry III. Did they have some land interests here? I wonder. Back into the nave and two furnishings reveal something of the English post-medieval religious settlement. There is a fine 17th century pulpit, an expression of the reality that there was rupture between the medieval past of Catholic England and the post-Reformation Church of England, where word was elevated to some extent above sacrament. But at the back of the south aisle is an object that speaks of continuity. It is the medieval baptismal font, made in the early 14th century and decorated with panels of window tracery that replicate those in the aisle and in the chancel windows. Both before and after the Reformation, the parishioners of Icklingham would have brought their children to be baptised in this font. There is always much more to say about a building like this than I can show you in a brief video, but this little visual record gives you an impression of the beauty, importance and value of this lovely church in Suffolk. Like many English churches, also in Icklingham is a delicate palimpsest. The fragmentary decoration, the interior finishings, iconography and liturgical arrangements and furnishings of the Middle Ages still speak of this church's Catholic past, but in their partiality also tell the story of the changing religious ideology that was ushered in by the English Reformation. The unfussy and unrestored interior here at All Saints in Icklingham somehow allows these elements of the building's history to be conveyed more clearly than they do in a church that has been restored by the Victorians and is therefore clouded by their idealised vision of the medieval Gothic past. Thanks for watching. If you enjoy this channel, you're bound to enjoy my magazine, The Antiquary. Published every month, it is a labour of love for me and in it I explore some of the more obscure aspects of our shared history, all beautifully illustrated in full colour. It ships across the world, is offered in print and digital format and readers give it five stars on Google. If you love your history like me, particularly the history of objects, buildings, people and places, why not consider subscribing? Subscribing helps support my work and the channel too. There's a link above and in the video description that takes you to the magazine website.