Great Bricett is a small village, however, if you expect some sleepy hamlet lost in the gentle misty valleys between Stowmarket and Hadleigh, you are about seventy years too late. Great Bricett, pronounced bry-set, sits not half a mile from the main gate of Wattisham airfield, now home to Army and Air-Sea rescue helicopters. Fortunately the church is concealed from all this, set back from the road up a narrow lane, in a pretty square of fine houses.
A first sight of this church inevitably elicits a reaction of what's going on here, then? For St. Mary and St. Lawrence is nothing if not unusual. It is extremely long and towerless, and has a nave and chancel all under the one roof. A 16th century house is built into the west end of it. The south side is like an encyclopedia of early medieval windows - few styles are unrepresented - and a curious arch at the east end reveals the site of a former transept chapel. The porch and the little bellcote are both modern.
A huge Mass dial is set to the east of the porch - it must be fully 40cm across, and easily the county's biggest. It is above a blocked doorway, and the arch stones beneath it give it a sense of scale.The porch itself also contains scratchings of interest. The Norman doorway has an incised inscription on its columns. At some time it has been rebuilt, and the letters are no longer in the right order. You can just about make out the word Leonardus. Now, why on earth should it say that?
Inside is an atmospheric space; long, low and full of coloured light reflecting in the polished floor. The centrepiece of the western end of the church is one of Suffolk's best Norman fonts.
Again, you are struck by the strangeness of it all, of something not being quite normal; for St. Mary and St. Lawrence was not built as a parish church at all. It was built as the convent church of an Augustinian Priory. It was an alien cell, the daughter community of a French Priory, St. Leonard near Limoges. Such things were not unusual in the Middle Ages - the Church in England was far more international than it is today - but such communities were vulnerable at times of war, and inevitably this Priory was separated from its mother, and given its independence in the 15th century.
Eventually, it was suppressed, and the church became a Parish church. There is a plan of the Priory on display inside, and it was very big - the current church formed the south side of a large square.
The above image is from, and the text contains excerpts from Simon Knott's excellent website www.suffolkchurches.co.uk , with grateful thanks.
If anyone would like to expand this Church Micro numbered series please do. Please contact sadexploration via www.geocaching.com so that he can keep track of the church numbers and names to avoid duplication.