St. Mary the Virgin
Ixworth
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A little of the history of the church and village
THE CHURCH OF SAINT MARY THE VIRGIN. IXWORTH. SUFFOLK
The Church consists of a Nave and Chancel, North and South Aisles, South
Porch and West Tower. A Vestry was added to the North side of the Chancel in
1885.
A church is recorded in Ixworth at the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086, but
of this structure no trace remains; it was probably built of timber rather than
stone. The present church dates from the 14th Century but was substantially
enlarged during the 15th and early 16th centuries, when the Tower was added.
The exterior of the church is in random flint, some knapped, with freestone
quoins and dressings, and some effective use of red brick for details; there is
pleasant variation of colour, texture and treatment in the walling which adds
greatly to the attraction of the building.
The West Tower is particularly impressive. Built during the later 15th Century,
its walls are six feet (1.8m) thick at the base. The striking embattled stone
parapet, decorated with flushwork panels, is nine feet (2.9m) high. The
buttresses are also ornamental with flushwork, but many of the thin flakes of flint
have fallen out. The most significant panel is the third up from the aisle on the
Southeast buttress, which bears the crown and arrows saltire of Saint Edmund
and the words "Mast Robert Schot Abot". This refers to Robert Schot or "Robert
of Ixworth" as he is called elsewhere, who was Abbot at Bury St. Edmunds from
1472 to 1474. Around the base of the tower are a number of panels with devices
ranging from simple chequerwork to the emblems of the Virgin and Saint
Catherine.
A number of Ixworth people made bequests in their wills for the new tower. The
best known is that of a local carpenter, Thomas Val., who died in 1472. His gift
is commemorated on a tile inscribed "Thome Val. gaf to the stepil iiij li" (£4.00),
which was embedded in the walling above the West Door.
Two tiles on the South Wall bore the name of William Densy, Prior of the house
ofAugustinian Canons in Ixworth, and the date 1472. It seems therefore, that
work on the tower was well underway in the 1470s. Money for leading the roof
was bequeathed by Mariana Rampholy in 1484.
The three dated tiles have been reset inside the Tower Room.
In 1553, the tower contained five "great bells". It now has a peal of six, two of
which—Nos. 4 and 5—are of late 15th Century date; Nos. 1, 2 and 3 were cast
by the well-known Suffolk bell-founder, John Darbie; two are dated 1679, the
other 1682. No. 6, cast by Lester and Peck of London in 1766, was recast by
Mearsin 1864.
A substantial sum was left to the Church by the late Leslie Turner, and this
Turner Bequest' was used to fit out the base of the tower as a room for small
meetings and social gatherings, instruction of children and preparation of
refreshments. It is in memory of the Turner family and was completed and
dedicated on June 1st, 1980. The folding doors and screen across the tower arch
were a gift from the Cross family in memory of Mr. Stanley Cross. The blue
velvet curtains were given anonymously.
The battlemented South Porch (late 14th Century) has cinquefoil arcading of flint
flushwork above the doorway, and a base of flint chequerwork. There are small
recumbent figures on the weathering of the two shallow corner buttresses.
Entry to the church is by the South Doorway, another of the surviving 14th
century parts of the structure. The pointed arch has a simple moulding and a
canopied niche above.
The Nave, in five bays, was completely reconstructed during the 15th Century.
It seems from the relationship of the arcades to the roof-bays, and to the spacing
of the clerestory windows, that it was planned as an ambitious whole. This gives
it an air of harmonious unity. The columns of the arcades have four attached
shafts with moulded capitals and basis. The shallow-pitched roof is of a simple
arch-braced construction. The spandrels of the main braces are filled with
tracery, and all the timbers are moulded. Each half-bay has small solid braces.
At the foot of each brace is a carved angel, with outstretched wings, carrying a
blank shield; the cornice has small winged angels in high relief. It seems that the
work was only just completed by the Reformation, for Robert Garrard, a wealthy
inhabitant, left money for the leading of the roof in his will in 1533.
The Benches, of the traditional poppy-head type, date from 1855 and replaced
box pews. The last four pairs at the West end of the Nave were removed in
1980. The tapestry kneelers have been embroidered by various Ixworth
residents.
The Font is probably 15th Century work and seems to have been lowered from
its original base. The cover is Edwardian, a memorial to Mrs P. Turner, organist
of the church for 35 years.
The North and South Aisles are alike in their roofs and window tracery, and
seem to have been remodelled together as part of the 15th Century alterations.
The stairs to the former Rood Loft are in a little turret on the East wall of the
South Aisle. In the North Aisle is the piscina of a pre-Reformation altar of St.
James. A Lady Chapel was set up there in 1936 as a gift from the late Dr and
Mrs Dobbin.
There are several memorials on the aisle walls, and set into the nave and aisle
floors. Most are to members of the Boldero family, who lived in Ixworth from the
17th to the early 19th Century. The illuminated list of Vicars on the north wall was
given by Mrs Olwyn Pickersgill in 1980 in memory of her husband, the late Vicar.
The Chancel, although heavily 'Victorianised', retains more 14th Century work
than any other part of the building: both windows on the south side; the double
piscina; and the chancel-arch itself, grooved on the soffit for a wooden
tympanum. The fine roof is of alternating hammer-beam and arch-braced
trusses.
The floor level of the chancel was raised in the mid-19th Century and all the
fittings are of that period.
The most important single feature in the chancel is the Coddington Tomb in the
north-east corner (1576). It is a tomb chest with decorated pilasters and three
shields, bearing the arms of Coddington quartering Jenour. Around the arch at
the back is Italian leaf carving which is considered particularly fine. A small brass
shows the kneeling figure of Richard Coddington facing his wife, who has behind
her the diminutive figures of a boy and girl, her children by her first marriage.
The three stained glass windows are all memorials to members of the Cartwright
family.
By the altar are three black ledger slabs, one to Richard Fiennes, son of the first
Viscount Saye and Sele, who resided for a short time at Ixworth Abbey and died
there in 1674; another to Margaret Cobb, his second wife, and a third to Richard
Norton and his wife Elizabeth, both of whom died in 1708. On the south wall,
opposite the Coddington Tomb, is a 16th Century monument to another Norton.
Outside the chancel, in the east wall, is the base of a small statue, and a niche
with characteristic 14th Century cusping, which is thought to have contained a
small rood. By the priest's door is a holy water stoup.
The Organ is a double manual by Nicholson and Lord, 1891, electrically blown.
Notes written by
Sylvia Colman
IXWORTH - OUR HERITAGE
One of the first things that
people notice about our village is its unusual name . . .
What does it mean ?
Where does it come from ?
There are a number of suggestions,
and here are three of them,
all drawn from known history
of the village:
1 It is a corruption of the ICENI, the tribe famous in East Anglia for its struggle
under Boadicea against the Roman invaders
2 It is of ROMAN origin; The first two letters - IX — are the Latin 9.
So perhaps Ixworth was the ninth garrison or played host to the ninth Legion
3 It is an ANGLO—SAXON word meaning "hiccups" - the village of people with hiccups;
(If you would like to know the answer, please read through to the end of this booklet)
All three of these suggestions could have some basis; The Iceni were certainly very much
in evidence all around the area and the discovery of coins indicates that there was a settlement in Ixworth. We do not know whether or not Boadicea ever came here, but as the settlement would have been situated on the main route to the south it seems more than likely that she did.
When the Romans came they established a garrison here which in time evolved to become a major settlement in the East Anglian highways network
There has been found evidence of Roman villas in what is now the High Street and there are also signs of a thriving pottery industry. The Romans were in occupation for some 350 years,
but around 400 AD the empire was collapsing, the occupying forces returned to Rome and
Britain was left in a state of limbo. The most recently minted coin of the period found in Ixworth is dated 402 AD which ties in neatly with this.
Little is known about either our country or our village until the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons who appear to have taken over the remains of the old Roman town and expanded it. There is
evidence of very early Anglo-Saxon building at Grimstone End, and an Anglo-Saxon
cemetery has been discovered along the River Blackbourne east of Dover Farm. There
is scanty evidence apart from this of other direct influence in the immediate area. But one very important development, which affected our village profoundly, was the foundation of the great
Abbey at Bury St; Edmunds by King Canute who came to the English throne in 1016. In the days of Edward the Confessor (1055) we know that one Achi held the tenancy of the farmlands of Ixworth from the Abbot of Bury;
When the Anglo—Saxons were overthrown at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Normans took possession of the land, it so happened that Baldwin, the then Abbot of Bury was friend of
William I the new king and the Abbey - and so also Ixworth - prospered under the new
government; (By coincidence the present incumbent of Ixworth currently occupies the Canon's
stall of Abbot Baldwin in St Edmundsbury Cathedral). The Domesday survey carried out in 1086 values the Manor of Ixworth, tenanted at that time by Robert de Blund, at £6. This family was to prove to be of great influence and importance to the village of Ixworth: In 1100 it founded an
Augustinian Priory of Black Canons and, following the destruction of the original building in the civil war between the followers of Stephen and Matilda some 50 years after the foundation was established, the de Blund family re-endowed the Priory with a new building on the present site in 1177. Two centuries on the tenancy of the Manor devolved to the Priory.
The mediaeval period saw Ixworth as a place of much importance; The preliminary steps were taken to build a large new church on the site of the much smaller original one. The village held a market charter —one of very few places in West Suffolk to have such a honour (the only others were at St Edmundsbury and Barrow) and until the reign of Henry VIII appears to have been a thriving and prosperous community, secure both by its links with the Abbey of St Edmundsbury and also by its own Priory.
The dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 brought a sudden and catastrophic decline to the fortunes
of the village. With the two sources of its well-being arbitrarily swept away it entered upon a long and steady period in which its prosperity and importance continued to lessen; The Church, which had been staffed and supported by the Abbey in Bury, lost all its endowments and there was no clergy house in the village until 1839 when the old Vicarage on the High Street was built: This may well account for the remarkably large number of very brief incumbencies recorded since 1571, only one remaining for as long as 30 years,
The market continued in being, held at the junction of the High Street and Stowmarket Road, until 1750 but was described as a "mean market" in its latter years: The Court continued to be held
in the village until 1962, first at the Pickerel Inn and, after 1870, in the Police Station (now the Robert Peel), but increasingly the village became less desirable to live in: Housing conditions were appalling and disease was rampant, and it is only over the past century that Ixworth has once
again become a lively, prosperous and highly desirable community to live in: Since the end of the Second World War its size has been greatly increased by the provision of much new housing, and the opening of the bypass, a mere 60 years after the need for such a road was first mooted,
has done wonders to meet the problems caused by ever increasing road traffic - though some might say that there is still an awful lot of it about!
Although the village is still an important centre, the increasing mobility of the population has led
to the closure of many shops over the years: In the early days of the twentieth century there were over fifty, including 4 butchers ; now there is but a fraction of that - but all of excellent quality. Patterns of work have also changed: Many residents of Ixworth now commute to work, as near as Bury and as far as London, reflecting the changes which have taken place everywhere: As we look back over the history of Ixworth we can see a time of ascendance followed by one of decline;
Now the pendulum is moving back once more and, at the start of the twenty first century, there is every reason to believe that the future holds great promise for those who live here:
This has been a very brief and perfunctory skip through many centuries: A more detailed
examination of the institutions and events of the last 50 or so years can be found in the admirable survey of the village which was produced in 1977 as part of the celebration of the Queen's Silver Jubilee - and of course there can be no substitute for the memories of people who have lived
all their lives here and who can recall so many people and events.
To augment some of the earlier events it seems to be right to mention one or two of the institutions and places of the village in rather more detail:
CHURCH AND CHAPEL As was mentioned above St. Mary's Church is the second church building to be
erected on the present site; It was built to replace a much smaller building, presumably either of Saxon or
Norman origin and, given its size and the work which must have been needed to be done, it is
hardly surprising that it took the best part of a century to complete. We know that it was towards the end of the 1300s that plans were made to have a building more in keeping with the grandeur
of the Abbey which was responsible for its ministry, and we also know that the Abbot of Bury in 1477, Robert Schott, was a native of Ixworth who contributed towards the cost of completing the tower which was completed in 1484. As has also been said, the history of the parish is unusual
for the rapid turnover of priests, both because for 300 years following the dissolution of the monasteries they had no house to live in and, as a result of the same event, there was no money
to pay them more than a pittance. The church was subjected to considerable reordering, largely affecting the chancel, in the middle of the nineteenth century and in 1980, following a most
generous bequest by Mr Leslie Turner, a meeting room was formed at the base of the tower.
There is also a long and honourable tradition of Nonconformity in the village. An. Independent Meeting House is recorded in 1703 and in 1717 Samuel Bury, a Presbyterian minister from
Bury St Edmunds, was certified as having a dwelling house here. The rise of Methodism in the eighteenth century quickly made its mark. Ixworth became the head of a Methodist Circuit in 1790 and in the following year there was a Meeting House at Ixworth Thorpe. In 1814 John Fowler, the Minister, was granted a house in Ixworth and a Wesleyan Chapel was erected in Stowmarket Road in 1831. Shortly after this, Methodism underwent a turbulent period in which a number of
Meeting Houses were closed and many members of the Church expelled, but Ixworth survived and indeed went on to prosper.
A Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in the Thetford Road in 1879 (it is now a furniture repository) and in 1888 the original Wesleyan Chapel was replaced by the present building in the High Street. It too has recently undergone much refurbishment.
IXWORTH ABBEY. This, as has been said, was originally the Priory of Black Canons which, in the years before its dissolution, had become immensely powerful in the village. The Abbot of Ixworth held his own manor, renting only a few small parcels of land from Bury Abbey, and the whole of the estate was managed by the Priory with no farms leased out. In 1500 a Market
Charter was obtained from the king — probably to prevent the Abbot in Bury demanding that
the produce from the estate should be taken there — and in the years before the Dissolution the village under the auspices of the Priory had reached its zenith with a tile kiln and many trades,
including a glover and a goldsmith, being practised there.
The final closure of the Priory in 1537 brought about a cataclysmic change as the Prior was
replaced by the Coddington family from Surrey. The king had long desired their home, nonesuch,
as a hunting lodge and withthe demise of the Priory offered it to the family by way of exchange.
As can be seen, they came into a highly desirable situation and proved to be excellent landlords. Although Richard Coddington died relatively soon after the arrival of the family his widow
Elizabeth survived for many years, at her death leaving a bequest of £5 for the relief of the needy
and bestowing the estate on John Caryll, the husband of her daughter by a previous marriage:
The Caryl family retained ownership until the estate was sold in 1627; A survey made two years earlier for the purposes of the sale is the first document to refer to the Priory as the Abbey as it is now called: The purchaser was Daniel Norton whose family continued to own the Abbey
until 1797 when Richard Norton's son, John Cartwright inherited it and it remained in that
family until 1957, the last heir to it having been killed in the Second World War.
Because the Abbey had in the past had such influence in the village it was clearly crucial that its occupants exercised their powers responsibly as, indeed, the Coddington family had done. The Nortons and the Cartwrights were more inclined to see the estate as a country house to which
they were infrequent visitors and indeed they were in the habit of letting it to friends who would
have felt no responsibility towards the village. As the fortunes of Ixworth continued to decline housing conditions became intolerable for many of its residents, and it is hard to avoid the
impression that bad landlords had not a little to do with that;
On the death of Mrs Cartwright in 1957 the Abbey Estate was bought by Messrs S W Cross & Sons who subsequently sold the house to Dr and Mrs Rowe. On their departure their son and
his family moved into the house and they remain the present occupants.
COUNCIL HOUSES One of Ixworth's undisputed claims to fame is that it boasts the first rural council housing to be built — four exceedingly well built pairs of semi detached houses on the
north side of Stowmarket Road; Their construction arose from the appalling housing conditions already referred to and they date from 1893, following much pressing for them from the then
Vicar, the Revd Frank Duerdin Perrott, and much opposition from the Cartwright family.
EDUCATION Although there are various records about education in Ixworth, it was not until 1840 that a school was actually erected in Thetford Road. This remained the only school in the village until the "New School" —a Secondary Modern School — was built in 1957 and the first school became a Primary School. By the end of the 1960s the old building was showing signs of inadequacy and a new Primary School was built on the present site in Crown Lane and opened
in 1970s. With the introduction of a three tier educational structure in Suffolk in 1973 the
Secondary Modern School received its present title of Ixworth Middle School.
THE IXWORTH TREE No survey of Ixworth's history, however brief, could possibly
ignore the Ixworth Tree which to this day is remembered with love by so many of the older
residents of the village. It stood on the site of the old market, at the junction of the High Street
with Stowmarket Road, and it stood not on a pavement nor at the edge of the highway but in
the middle of the road: Its popularity as a meeting place in the village was enhanced by a seat, erected around the circumference, to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935:
Sadly, the tree was damaged when a vehicle collided with it and the damage was so acute that
it had to be removed altogether. Its loss is still keenly felt, but the village sign situated off the
road at a point adjoining that where the tree stood incorporates it in its design.
DID YOU GET IT ?
Although the Iceni were an influence in the area and had a settlement in Ixworth it is generally accepted that
the name of the village does not derive from them since there would have been no term in
those early days to describe the tribe as we now describe it. And, although the Romans had a garrison and then a town, there is no reason to believe that Ixworth was the ninth garrison
and every reason to know that it did not house the ninth Legion which, although stationed in
Britain, went missing in Scotland for reasons which remain a mystery to this day? Trust can sometimes be stranger than fiction, and the truth about Ixworth is that it was the village of people with hiccups and the name is an Anglo-Saxon one:
Gyxeweorde
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