St Nicholas, Oakley

 Just a mile along the road and then up a narrow lane from Brome, the last church mentioned on here is the church at Oakley. Oakley and Brome have long been joined for parish purposes and share a village hall etc.

Like Brome, Oakley church has a Lychgate, and inside it says................. 

Agnes Lady Bateman erected this lytch gate 1908. I wonder why whoever carved this put in the letter T that we don't usually use in the word.

A very typical Suffolk church with a very neat and tidy churchyard

The porch once had an upper storey, but that has long gone.

Quite plain and typically a Victorian restoration.

They've even got a brass plaque which says "This Church of St Nicholas Oakley was restored and bells rehung AD 1876-1879 at the joint expense of the Patron Sir Edward Clarence Kerrison, Baronet, The Rector the Reverend George Mapletoft Paterson MA and the Parishioners."

The font is very plain

But the Reredos behind the altar is quite unusual, being tiled with a picture of the Last Supper included.

This is also a memorial, this time to Captain John Worth and his wife Catherine, and put here by their daughter Dame Mary Catherine Sinclair Walker in 1882.

Alongside the banner for the long gone Mothers Union is an unusual feature - some sort of memorial?

The East window

This plate was high on the wall and I couldn't see what it was, but with enlarging it's showing the 7 churches in the Benefice. Brome, Oakley, Burgate, Wortham, Thrandeston, Stuston and Palgrave. (Stuston and Thrandeston are two I've not visited yet.) These villages are all along the Suffolk/Norfolk border, much nearer to Diss and Norwich in Norfolk than to Suffolk main towns.

These two niches are odd - I wonder what they once housed.

More information is as usual on Simon Knott's Suffolk Churches website

Back Soon