Brettenham church has been effectively abandoned. There was no one in the parish interested in keeping it open, and services are no longer held there. You could tell that from the air of neglect. Although the graveyard was neatly clipped, presumably for the activities of the pagan cult of the dead, the church itself was shabby and dirty, with holes in the windows and the porch full of dead leaves.
Brettenham church is one of the major East Anglian works of the 19th century architect SS Teulon. He had been appointed by Lord Buxton to rebuild Shadwell Park, the great house to the east of the church, and in 1852 he turned his attention to replacing the little Norman building which had previously stood on this site. He retained the base of the 14th century tower and the Norman south doorway, but everything else here is his. It must have cost a fabulous amount of money. The church underwent another massive restoration in the first decade of the 20th century, when all the stained glass and furnishings installed by Teulon were removed (the woodwork went to Rushford) and replaced in an elegant Art Nouveau style. The glass is one of the most extensive ranges in East Anglia of the work of AL Moore. The glass means that it is impossible to see inside, but by poking a camera through some of the numerous holes it was possible to photograph part of the screen, and some of AL Moore's beautiful work.
