Text is taken from Simon Knott's fantastic Suffolk Churches website, with grateful thanks.
There is no other Suffolk church quite like St Michael. Suffolk is famous for its naves, but the nave here is almost hidden, squeezed between the huge chancel, longer and wider than the nave to which it is attached, the great tower, and two ornate aisles. The pretty clerestory peeps up in the middle, as if the nave were standing on tip-toe to take a look at the outside world.
Wills specialist Simon Cotton noted that quite a few bequests in the last years of the 15th century left money for the tower, although there is evidence that it hadn't been started by 1500. This means it must have been built pretty much in one campaign, the battlements topping it out on the very eve of the Reformation. But it is the chancel that makes St Michael an extraordinary church. Whereas at Lavenham, Long Melford and elsewhere, the churches were rebuilt by the new money of 15th century industrial Suffolk as great spaces for public piety, here the rebuilding was effectively an expedient measure for a landed family. The Howards, the Dukes of Norfolk, residents of the nearby castle, lost their family mausoleum at Thetford Priory to the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. They built the great chancel here as a new one, to be their final resting place for generations to come. It wasn't finished until 1554, after the brief but militantly protestant intervention of Edward VI's reign, when Mary I seemed to have brought some stability to the English church again.
In these turbulent years of the mid-Sixteenth Century, they had backed Catholic Mary's claim to the throne against that of the protestant Lady Jane Grey and seemed, for a brief while, to have chosen the winning side. However, when Mary died just five short years after her accession and Catholic England was lost forever, their patronage was not forgotten. The Howards retired, licking their wounds, to their other castle at Arundel in Sussex, leaving the new Church of England a fascinating document of how the Reformation years affected a great landed family, a moment frozen in time. Framlingham's Catholic community today meet in the nearby parish church of St Clare, a bare shadow of this former glory, although, ironically, their great Cathedral at Norwich was built by a direct descendant of the Howards.
Above the west end of the church sits what many people consider to be the greatest treasure of this church, the organ. It dates from 1674, although the case may be even earlier. It was installed here in 1709, only to be moved into the chancel by the Victorians. In 1969, reunited with its case, which had spent a century in the castle museum, it was returned to its rightful place at the west end. The west end of the north aisle beside it has been reordered as a prayer chapel, which is rather lovely. The west end of the south aisle is a shop, but this is not intrusive.
The font sits in the north aisle. It is medieval, but seems recut. Otherwise, the nave was restored sensitively by the Victorians, and retains the feel of a serious urban space which was no doubt intended by the restorers. Beyond it, you step through the chancel arch, where magnificence awaits. Ahead is the altar, and beyond it an interesting altar piece from the time when Laudian piety and the beginnings of the Age of Enlightenment touched fingers for a moment. It is an abstract image of 'Glory', dating from the early 17th century. It is similar to those that can be seen in some Cambridge college chapels (this church was inherited by Pembroke College, Cambridge, in the late 16th century). It did jolly well to survive the Puritan terror. The chancel sprawls into both aisles, a wide open space which is pleasingly full of light. It is a perfect setting for the tombs, which are, of course, what many people come to Framlingham to see.
The cache is not hidden at the given co-ordinates, but is hidden on the outskirts of the town - it's walkable, but also drivable.
The answers to the questions can all be found in the churchyard. Start at the gate which opens from Church Street and the noticeboard nearby:
Parish Office phone number: 01ABC DJ12E5
The bench given by the Royal British Legion was donated in November 20FG
Standing at the War Memorial, how many angels with wings can you see on the Chancel roof? = H
The cache can be found at:
N 52 F(H-B).C(G-C)(B-J)
E 001 B(E-H).EAD
When you are at the final location it IS NOT on the house side of the lane.