The Church of St Peter & St. Paul, Bardwell

 It often puzzles me when I go to visit churches how difficult they are to find. Often the tower can be seen from a long way off but then once I get into the village actually finding the church is sometimes quite difficult. Trees, houses and small lanes and the church vanishes. Bardwell was a case in point. The tower is 87 feet tall and I could see it all the way across the fields as I approached the village but when I reached a junction there was no way of knowing which way to turn. I got there in the end!

It's surrounded by trees - impossible to get a good photo

The reason for this church being included in the 100 treasures in 100 churches book is because of the age of this stained glass. It dates from C15 and is one of the earliest and most complete in Suffolk. It is a portrait of Sir William Berdewell  (giving his name to the village) who is thought to have built the tower,the hammerbeam roof and the south porch

The 100 treasures book says "Look closely to see his gold-rimmed glasses" but even zooming in I coudn't see anything.

 The hammerbeam roof still has some of the paintwork which would have decorated it in the past. It has been dated to 1421 from a book held by one of the wooden figures on the brackets - about halfway down on the right hand edge.

 

View down the Nave

It isn't a bicycle on the right of the photo above! but a coffin bier, now used to display leaflets about the church.

The other stained glass windows in the church are more recent and more colourful than the one from the C14

 

 Elaborate tomb in the chancel

The remains of a wall painting, which would have been painted over in later years

The 100 treasures book also says to look at the colourful modern kneelers depicting scenes of modern life in the village but the kneelers were all stacked upside down on some of the pews which were taped off (can you really catch covid by kneeling on a tapestry kneeler?! or sitting on a wooden pew?)

All except the one below which was on the bench by the war memorial on the north wall at the back of the nave. If they are all as colourful then it must be wonderful to see them spread out around the church.

The porch is huge and decorated with flintwork panels, small carvings of flowers plus the saints

I'm not sure what these remnants of stonework are, I guess ancient stones from the graveyard, they are on the bench in the porch.

As usual there are more photos and information on Simon Knott's  Suffolk Churches Website

Back Tomorrow

Sue

The Yew

 The Yew hedge between my front garden and next door neighbours front garden has had a trim last week. It didn't take me long to cut with the electric hedge trimmer. Much, much easier than the many metres of hawthorn and privet at the Cottage. I raked up all the biggest bits and then hoovered the rest up with the lawn mower The hedge must only be 7 years old according to neighbours but has got very wide and tall in that time. I couldn't reach some of the top middle bits but next door neighbour was able to quickly get rid of the straggle. He also volunteered to clear all the small stuff from his lawn - thank goodness. Hopefully it only needs cutting once a year - there's conflicting advice online.

I've not had much to do with Yew trees or hedges- none anywhere I've lived before but of course they are famously long lived and found in churchyards all over the country including over the road. Back in the Middle Ages they made the best longbows for archery

Here's the Yew pages from the Complete Flower Fairy Book by Cicely Mary Baker

 

Looked in my book about the Ogham Tree Alphabet and discovered it's the tree that represents the Winter Solstice so I've made a note to write a blog post about it then.

Wordsworth wrote a poem about them too but it's a bit long to include here, this is a small part.

This solitary tree! - a living thing

Produced too slowly ever to decay

Of form and aspect too magnificent

To be destroyed

and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Song of the Bow" HERE

 That's enough about the Yew for now

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Saturday Round-Up and the Donated Meal

A quiet week - in several ways. The weather didn't do much, cloud, drizzle and just a few bursts of sunshine and the road that goes out of the village to the A140 is closed for 10 days so the amount of traffic going by was cut by about 99% .

On Tuesday evening I walked just a few minutes up the road to the WI meeting . It was the first real meeting since covid. Now here is an odd thing - when I started Small WI in 2017 the only person I knew was the President (my sister in law). When I started Big WI at Bacton a few months later one of the 3 people I knew was the President (she was the Mum of one of the Cub-Scouts in my pack in the 1980s with a son the same age as Eldest Daughter). Now in this WI the only person I knew was ........yes...... The President (she was Cub-Scout Leader in this  village in the 1980's when I was Cub Scout Leader in Bacton) Reckon I must be well connected!

 As it was the first proper meeting since March 2020 there was no speaker because a lot of sorting out was needed and disappointingly one of the things that came up was the desperate need for a new Treasurer and Secretary. If no one comes forward by the November AGM this WI will be suspended. Bother! Just as I find somewhere I can walk to! This is such a shame as it's a good sized WI with 40 members.

I'm waiting to hear when Bacton WI will get going with real in person meetings again as I want to carry on going there  - it still works out well with meetings in alternate weeks and I'm closer now too.

A couple of odd things have happened to the blog this week. 

When I go into posts to start a new post or to add to one in drafts, I get the page in Html format = gobbledygook - so that I have to click top left to change to Compose Mode. A warning comes up

 

Switch to compose mode?

Your HTML content is invalid. Switching to the compose mode may lose a part of your content.

 

Invalid content?  What on earth does that mean . Once in compose mode it's back to normal, for a while.

Also the ability to add/delete blogs to the "blogs I read" sidebar has been complicated by needing to go into the layout page.

Then on Wednesday my post didn't update on other peoples "blogs I Read" list. I tried logging out and logging back in again - but that made no difference. Ho Hum!

When I met up with Rachel-in-Norfolk for coffee yesterday we agreed that so many blogger changes seem completely pointless - especially if it was working perfectly well before.

Many years ago, so long I'd forgotten, we used to celebrate our early vegetable harvest by having a plateful of fresh vegetables from the garden with some cheese sauce.  I only remembered when I was given some runner beans from my sister and a courgette and sweetcorn cob from BiL Andrew. I couldn't be bothered to make cheese sauce so just grated some cheese on top......and a bit of butter on the corn. Everything straight from their gardens to my plate....delicious! Thank you to both.

Back Monday

Sue