Church Micro 3355 Debenham St. Mary Magdalene Traditional Geocache
Hanoosh: As the owner has not responded to my previous log requesting that they check this cache I am archiving it.
Regards
Brenda
Hanoosh - Volunteer UK Reviewer www.geocaching.com
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Church Micro 3355 Debenham St. Mary Magdalene
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A nice church in a nice village. Cache placed with the kind permission of St. Mary Magdalene Church, Debenham.
From Simon Knott's website www.suffolkchurches.co.uk , with grateful thanks: St Mary Magdalene is a large, surprisingly urban church. But why not? In larger places, it is the town that has become more urbanised, not the church. Most towns were once like this. It is set back on a rise above the old market place, although most people will approach it from the west, beside the little parish hall on the high street. Here, the first thing to admire is Suffolk's grandest galilee porch, with its former chapel above. These western porches are most unusual: there is a similar one at Bottisham in Cambridgeshire, and one on the round tower at Mutford. The western extension at Lakenheath was never a porch at all. So here is an experience to savour: you enter the church through a series of unfolding spaces, so that finally opening the double west doors into the nave comes as a surprise. You step out from beneath the recently restored tower. The porches and aisles clustering beneath it create the sense of a cruciform building, which of course it isn't. It is certainly a very old tower, though, with evidence of Norman and even Saxon work on the lower reaches. The upper decorated stage is 14th century, and looks rather unusual for Suffolk, the bell openings being so close to the battlements. This is because it had to be truncated after being struck by lightning in the 17th century. Perhaps its squatness is rather charming. The ring of 8 bells is considered one of the most mellow in the county, and the space beneath them, has several of those boards recording remarkable feats of bell-ringing. You step into a big church made gorgeous by the brick patterning of the floor, the fruit of Debenham's one major 19th Century industry. Red and white bricks are laid in a diamond pattern, with small floral tiles in the points of the diamonds. It is surely one of the most beautiful church floors in Suffolk, and a sign that, although the inside of this building is almost entirely 19th Century in content and character, this interior is by no means an anonymous one. Grumpy old Cautley pottered about looking for medieval survivals, but this is an interior to enjoy as a whole; as with so many urban churches, the 19th century work contributes to a sense of continuity rather than disrupting it. "If anybody would like to expand to this series please do, I would just ask that you could let Sadexploration know first so he can keep track of the church numbers and names to avoid duplication. There is also a Church Micro Stats & Information page found via the Bookmark list."
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N fvta sebz nobir.