St Mary, Newbourne, Suffolk
I haven't really wanted to go out much this year. The Saturdays have been mostly rainy, and in any case I haven't much felt like it. It was as if my get-up-and-go got up and went. It was nearly nine months since I'd last done a proper church-exploring bike ride.
But the first day of May dawned so beautifully. I walked up to the corner shop at about half past six past the entrance to the Park, and all the birds were singing. They knew that winter was over. There wasn't a cloud in the clear blue sky, and hardly a breath of wind. But still I found excuses to lock myself away. There was so much to do, so many tasks I could find to keep me busy, like redesigning my website, putting stuff I don't need on ebay, reading a book, doing the hoovering, hanging out the washing. It wasn't a good day to leave the house.
It was while doing the last of these displacement activities that I finally gave in to myself. It was the first day of May, it was a beautiful day, and I needed to be out in it. So at twelve o'clock I got on my bike and cycled out through Bucklesham and Brightwell to Newbourne and sat outside the Fox in the sunshine with a pint of Adnams. It felt good. I wandered over to the church, where the slanting May sunshine in the early afternoon was picking out perfectly the inscriptions on the Page family headstones, including that of George Page, the Suffolk Giant. I must have visited this church more than twenty times, but I had never been able to read it so clearly before. I sat inside the church for a little while, and then out into the sunshine again.
I took the abandoned back lane which leads to a little-known crossing over the hellish A14, and then down into Levington, where a second pint of Adnams at the Ship was just reward for the trauma of crossing the dual carriageway. And then down and up, down and up through Nacton and Gainsborough and home.
In 2008 (although I have visited many times since) I had written of Newbourne: You don't have to head far out of Ipswich , especially in winter, to find yourself alone. Newbourne, sometimes spelt Newbourn, is barely a mile from the busy Foxhall roundabout on the A12, but the road into it is single track, with passing places. When you get there, you find a village which is a little different from most, because in the 1930s it became the home of the utopian Land Settlement Association, a community of market gardeners from the deprived coal-mining areas of Yorkshire. It still stands out on an Ordnance Survey map because of all the glass houses.
The LSA came to an end in 1983 and now most of the greenhouses are operated by local nursery giants Notcutts. The Fox is one of the best village pubs in the Ipswich area, I love to sit outside it on a summer weekday afternoon, and let time pass. Above it on a hill is the lovely old church. Near neighbours Waldringfield and Hemley both have red brick towers, but Newbourne's is of flint, and St Mary has one of Suffolk's south towers, forming the entrance porch and bellringing chamber.
Bell ropes hang down inside the entrance, as at Timworth. At first sight, from the south, the positioning of the tower is not immediately apparent, because a chapel from the south aisle forms a redbrick wall against the tower. You might think at first that this is a small church with a larger, later nave built on to the north. The west end of the nave is heavily buttressed, possibly to stop it heading to join the pub at the bottom of the hill.
St Mary, famously, had its east end blown out in the great storm of October 1987 (the same happened to Uggeshall). No attempt has been made to restore its former Victorian broodiness. Rather, a lighter, airy modern window shows Christ ascending, and the curious face at the bottom is that of Christ from the former, blown-out window. The survival of this fragment among the rubble and masonry is spoken of locally as a miracle (albeit slightly ironically - after all, this is the Church of England).
The south chapel is perhaps not really a chapel at all, but an aisle at arm's length. It is built of Tudor brick, and known as the Rowley chapel. But nothing here dates back before the mid-20th century. It contains a rather nice memorial to Cordy and Lucy Wolton featuring a Suffolk Punch horse.
The rood loft stairs curve sweetly behind the stepped pulpit. On my first visit, in 1999, the nice lady cleaning the stairs thought I was from the Health and Safety Executive when she saw me photographing it. I assured her that many Suffolk churches had more precipitous rood loft stairs than hers. Coming back in 2008, I was struck by just how beautifully kept the building is, with a real sense of being loved and cared for. I think that this must be a fine church to worship in, and thanks to the energy of local 'sporting parson' John Waller*, into his benefice this falls, there is a service here nearly every Sunday. As with the other churches in the benefice, it is open to pilgrims and strangers every day.
Just outside the porch, on the eastern side of the path, there are three 19th century gravestones to the Page family, and the third one is the gravestone of the Suffolk giant, George Page. It is rather faded now, but you can make out his name and title. He was 7ft 7in tall when he died in 1870, after a life spent in a travelling circus. The story goes that George joined a fair run by Samuel Whiting on May 1st 1869, together with his brother Meadows, who was about 7 ft 4 ins.
George died in April 1870, and his inscription reads Sacred to the Memory of George Page, the Suffolk Giant, who died April 28th 1870, in his 26th year. He was exhibited in most towns in England but his best exhibition was with his Blessed Redeemer. The gravestone inspired the 1926 novel The Giant of Oldbourne by John Owen.
George's brother Meadows continued to tour until 1875, when his daughter was born. Apparently, a knife was left in their caravan; in the secret language of the fairground, this was a warning to get out. Meadows returned to his old job as a farm labourer, and died as recently as 1917.
*John Waller died in 2014, bringing an extraordinary dynasty to an end. He had been Rector of Waldringfield, as had his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, in unbroken succession since the 1860s.
