This is another addition to the Church Micro series. This is a micro container. This cache replaces a previously archived cache - it's such a nice church it really needs a cache! This cache is not hidden on church grounds.
Simon Knott has this to say about the church:
St Mary sits down a little lane lined by 17th Century cottages, and you approach it from the north side. Of all the medieval parish churches in the Ipswich area, this one feels most like the traditional East Anglian medieval church that people expect to see when they come to Suffolk. First of all, there is the grandness, the great bulk of the 15th Century tower squatting like a bulldog, and then leavened by its elegant, recently restored spire (once a common feature of Suffolk churches). Along the battlements of the aisles, statues stand like guardians, mythical creatures, a bear, a monkey. Then there is the setting beside the river. And inside, this is a church full of the memories of the past of its community, and a sense of its use by that community today. St Mary has the feel of a classic country church, in a suburb that feels like a proper village.
You step in through the open north porch into a wide, neat interior. The first thing that strikes you is Suffolk's only medieval stone rood screen. It dates from about 1300. There are several of these across the border in Essex, but it seems so unusual to see it here in an otherwise familiar medieval space. As James Bettley points out in the new Buildings of England: Suffolk, it is part of the architecture rather than the furnishing. It gives an impression of the way medieval churches would enfold as a series of rooms before the 15th century passion for wide open congregational and processional spaces.
The quatrefoil holes were punched through at the end of the 19th century, when the chancel received its ritualist makeover. This was the second major Victorian restoration here; a drawing from the 1840s shows a nave full of box pews, all focused on a pulpit set in the middle of the south aisle. In the 1860s, this seating was replaced, and turned to face the altar at the east end. The pulpit was moved to its 'traditional' position.
The chancel reredos by W D Caroe is a good example of turn-of-the-last-century seriousness. It sits beneath a familiarly stodgy window by Kempe & Co. The bulky choir stalls, also by Caroe, have been removed from the chancel and placed in the south aisle.
During the 19th century, the font was moved into the space beneath the tower to create a baptistery. The font is chiefly remarkable for its 16th century cover, which, like the one at Boxford, has doors which open outwards to give access to the water. Recently, the large local factory of Packard & Sons closed, and the firm's elegant war memorial has been resited on the west wall of the tower behind the font. The parish war memorial is in the south aisle.
About the cache
This is a micro cache - a camo bison tube - and the final location is hidden within sight of the church. It is wheelchair and pushchair accessible if you approach from the road or via the footpath from the Victory Hall car park.
This cache is not hidden on church grounds.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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