Woolpit St. Mary

Woolpit was a wealthy parish in medieval times, popular with pilgrims visiting the chapel of Our Lady of Woolpit and the Lady's Well, the water here was supposed to cure eye problems.

The picture below is from the Suffolk churches website, my exterior photo wasn't very good


A wide light large church for a large and very old village, one of only a dozen or so Suffolk churches to have a spire.

This is just a quick tour of the church, many more photos and information HERE on the Suffolk Churches website

Like a couple of others I've visited it's the roof that is the amazing thing about the church. A mid-C15 double hammerbeam roof full of saints,angels, bishops and kings

The screen below, showing Saints also dates from that period but was repainted more recently

This wording over the door is interesting

 The porch dating from C15, is said to be one of the best in the country. Like several others in the county it has a small room above the entrance where important papers and perhaps the churches holy items would have been stored.

This house right beside the church has unusual paintings in the mock windows

Woolpit was just a couple of miles from where I lived as a child and we all knew the story of "The Green Children"

The two green children, who climbed out of the ground, speaking a strange language and afraid of the sunlight. The boy died soon after, but the girl grew up and married; she learned to speak English, and told of St Martin's Land, from where she and her brother had emerged. There are holes in the ground around Woolpit, quarries where bricks were made in the 19th century and gravel extracted through much of the 20th. But perhaps there was once something much older, for every Suffolk schoolchild knows that the name 'Woolpit' is nothing to do with wool, but with the wolves that once lived in the pits here...........


 Thank you for comments on Saturday and apologies for not replying

Back Tomorrow
Sue