At first sight, it isn't so bad. The graveyard on the north side is
delightful, full of mature trees and 18th century headstones. The
shape of the building is good, especially with the sun behind. It
is only on approaching that the details make themselves known, and
there seems to be no relationship between the styling and the
proportions. And where did that tower come from? But there is a
heartwarming story here that is worth telling.
In April 1987, this tiny parish was presented with a horrific
£200,000 bill for repairs. The Diocesan architect, aware that this
was an impossible demand, recommended that the church be partially
demolished, enabling the parish to continue using a smaller, fitter
building. Funding bodies and charities like English Heritage were
unable to help, since the building was only listed at Grade II, and
wasn't considered important enough for injections of cash.
Not surprisingly, the Parish Council decided instead to opt for
making the building redundant. That way, they could move in with
neighbouring Brampton, while the Redundant Churches Fund took over
the headache of paying for repairs. The building would be lost to
CofE liturgical use, but would be retained as a village landmark,
and could also be used for community purposes.
The church was declared redundant in January 1989. However, there
was bad news ahead. The Redundant Churches Fund decided that the
1854 rebuilding had been so drastic that they could not justify
taking St Margaret on. Simply, there was just not enough medieval
structure left to justify the expense. The Parish Council asked the
Fund to think again. They did, and came to the same conclusion. So
St Margaret was put up for sale by the Diocese, pending planning
permission for residential or commercial use.
Unfortunately, nobody wanted to buy it. This should really come as
no surprise, since few people would be prepared to splash out a six
figure sum just to make a structure sound, before even thinking of
converting it. The majority of churches sold off during the great
wave of redundancies ten years earlier had mostly been in good
condition. And now things got desperate, because included in the
legislation that governs church redundancies is the clause that, if
no no use has been found for a Grade II building within three
years, it must be demolished.
Those three years went by, probably rather quickly in the eyes of
the former Parish Council, and in May 1992 the Church Commissioners
prepared the draft order for the demolition of St Margaret,
Stoven.
This must have been a depressing time for villagers. They were
presented with something of a fait accompli, but in any event a
public meeting was held to discuss it, and representatives of
national bodies like English Heritage and the Redundant Churches
Fund attended. It was agreed that if there was any way forward it
was in a thorough architectural examination of the church
building.
Well, you may be able to guess what happened. It didn't take long
to discover that to all intents and purposes this was a medieval
building - rather than being demolished, the former church had been
covered with a Norman skin. You can see this for yourself; the
plaster has been removed in places on the south side, exposing the
outline of the medieval window splays beneath.
As a consequence of this, the listed building status was raised by
the Department of the Environment to Grade II*, and suddenly things
looked a little brighter. In the short term, the new status
qualified the building for English Heritage grant aid, and in the
longer term the parish decided to refer matters back to the
Redundant Churches Fund, which in the meantime had morphed into the
Churches Conservation Trust.
And then something extraordinary happened. The survey for the
newly-funded repair work showed that the total cost would be about
£60,000, less than a third of the figure quoted six years earlier!
You have to wonder quite how such a disparity occured, and if
events would have been so traumatic if the revised figure had been
quoted to the parish at the time. Suddenly, it seemed as if Stoven
parish might be able to cope after all. At Easter 1996 the church
opened for business again. The Redundancy order was rescinded, and
a new Parish Council convened.
Since that time, work has continued on restoring St Margaret to
fomer glories. And as an act of faith the door is open to visitors
every day.
So you step in to an interior that is lovelier than you have been
led to expect, and not wholly mock-Norman in style at all. The
chancel arch is more restrained than some 19th century confections,
the east end of the chancel is elegant, the tiling polite and the
benches plain and fitting. Indeed, those aliens might have got away
with it here; they leafed through the book to the Early English
section for the font and the pulpit, both of which are more
imaginative than many in the style, and most people nowadays would
find the intimacy of this narrow building more pleasing than the
usual wide-open spaces so beloved of the Victorians.
The people of Stoven must feel a sense of relief that they still
have a parish church in the village, but the real irony is that it
isn't how original the building is that matters at all. The
Victorians restored in medieval styles to create a false sense of
continuity; but the continuity is always there anyway. It lies not
in the bricks and mortar but in the people of the parish who have
used St Margaret as their touchstone down the long generations,
both as Catholics before the Reformation and as Anglicans
afterwards. Outside St Margaret, some of those people still lie in
the ground.
Text taken from www.Suffolk.churches.co.uk
Church Micro Series
If any body would like to add to this series, please do, but
could you please let
sadexploration know first, so he can keep track of the Church
numbers and names to avoid duplication.
Ybbx sbe n erq obk.