Cotton church, Suffolk - hanging by a thread?

I've written only seven blog posts since the beginning of 2024; this is the first since February 2025. This is largely because for most of that time I've been working on two books, the publication of the first of which I announced in my previous post, and the second of which I delivered to the publishers last week (the Northamptonshire volume in the same series as the Hertfordshire one, to be published, I think, in 2026). Each book is only 20,000 words long, so I really shouldn't have taken so long over them. Now they're done I intend to get back to blogging at better than snail's pace; I haven't forgotten about my mission (to give it a grandiose title) to write about Herts churches. But I've recently been visiting some Suffolk churches, and I'll write something about them while they're fresh in my mind. 

Cotton church was locked when I arrived one Monday morning, but a notice in the porch announces that the keyholder lives just across the road. Unfortunately they weren't in when I knocked, so I decided to go elsewhere and try again after lunch. And so it was that two or three hours later I pulled up outside the church and climbed out of the car. As I did so I noticed a lady walking two dogs across the churchyard; she called to me from twenty or thirty yards away 'Do you want to go in the church?' A very happily timed rearrival. She was the keyholder, and went off to fetch it.

The first thing we notice when approaching the church from the road is the east window, with its flowing tracery (all renewed but presumably following the original design). At the bottom are five lights on which sit four spherical triangles (their bases almost forming a transom), and above these are two concave lozenges and, at the very top, a quite large shape that's essentially a quatrefoil, albeit one with extra sub-cusps and lobes, within a mandorla which is pointed at the top, and at the bottom stretched into an ogee curve. On either side of the window are image niches surmounted by pinnacles. All this signals a building of some grandeur from c.1330.

Walking around the outside before we go in we're mightily surprised to find that the west wall of the tower ... well, that there is no west wall of the tower, at least not at ground level and for quite some height. Instead there's a tall arch with an iron gate leading to the ground level ringing chamber. This is a most unusual arrangement, and I can't believe one that's popular with the ringers, especially in winter. There's not even a door from here into the church, just a large window, so they must feel like excluded second-class citizens.

 

The south porch and doorway are another display piece, as elaborate as the east front; the doorway has three orders and a band of fleurons and fruits in the arch. At the bottom of these on each side are little figures (see the photo immediately below); the one on the right has claws or cloven hooves for feet.

The capitals have richly carved foliage.

The central capital on the right has foliate head ('green man') peering out, not at all an unusual sight, but his hands are also visible, which I don't think is at all common, and makes him seem a little threatening, as if he's about to crawl out.

The label stop on the left (if there was ever one on the right it's long gone) seems to be a lizard, or a lizard-like creature. Like some other areas of the doorway, it has the remains of what is probably greeny-yellow paint, maybe original.

On entering we find a marvellously airy and atmospheric space. The nave has five proud bays of typical Decorated quatrefoil piers, the arches richly moulded. 

The Jacobean pulpit is an exceptionally fine piece, enhanced by having a winged creature - probably a wyvern, if we're going to assign it a species - preening itself on the handrail, apparently wearing its wings like an extravagant Ascot races-bound hat. I wonder what thoughts it might engender in the priest as he or she climb the steps to preach their sermon. The reader's desk is from the same period.

The font bowl is Victorian, but the pedestal is original. The Buildings of England ('Pevsner') suggests that the eight figures could be monks or bedesmen, and I can't offer a better identification.

Undoubtedly the major attraction of the interior, the main thing that makes it definitely worth trying again later if the keyholder is out, is the double hammerbeam roof. To be exact, it's a false double hammerbeam, as the upper hammerbeams are purely decorative, and not functional at all, as can be seen in the photo immediately above. They jut out horizontally, but end in midair, with no vertical member to support anything. They also have small angels (most of them modern replacements), unlike the lower ones. There is much tracery in the spandrels - three pierced trefoils in the lower ones, solid geometrical shapes in the upper - and the three tiers of purlins also have pierced tracery running all the way along their length. I can hardly avoid running dangerously close to cliche territory and saying that the roof is the church's 'crowning glory'. A parishioner called Thomas Cooke left money for its building in his will of 1471, so we can date it to within a few years.

The roof has lasted 576 years so far, and it's easy to assume that it will automatically and necessarily last at least as long into the future. However, the keyholder lady and I chatted, and it really brought home to me the precariousness of our ecclesiastical heritage. It's quite a big church (though no bigger than many in that area), and used to have fortnightly services but is now down to monthly. There are no facilities (toilets, kitchen, etc), so the chances of its ever being used for concerts and so on are slim. (How would even an average sized wedding cope?) The village has a population of 526 (last but one census); how big the normal congregation is I don't know, but I'd guess a few dozen at most, and nearly all oldies (as an unashamed oldie myself I feel I can use this term non-pejoratively). The locals, even the non-service attending ones, probably distantly enjoy having a fine building in their village, but I doubt many of them take much active interest in it. (I'm not suggesting, of course, that the inhabitants of Cotton are unusual in this, only that they're typical of our national attitude to churches.) It's a fine church, but no finer than very many others; apart from the  hammerbeam roof there's nothing to make it stand out - no monuments, no stained glass (except a few fragments in the tracery). It must cost a bomb to maintain. If, as must be inevitable I'd have thought, closure is threatened one day - there are within a few miles other, perhaps more practical, churches (Bacton and Mendlesham, for example) to which the few services could be moved - will it be possible to save it? Will it be worth saving? (My answer would obviously be 'yes', but that counts for nothing.) Have the Churches Conservation Trust or Friends of Friendless Churches got the resources when there are hundreds of other excellent but middle-ranking churches in the same predicament? I doubt it. The future is grim, in this and many other ways.

I've not yet mentioned perhaps the most striking feature of the interior, the leaning nave arcades. A bit of a lean in a column isn't particularly rare, but I've never seen anything like this, especially on the north. The lean is clearly ancient rather than modern (and really is as bad as the photos make it look - no optical illusion). I don't think there's any danger of collapse (there are metal tie-rods across the nave, probably Victorian), but it's an arresting visual metaphor for the precariousness of the existence of many of our parish churches. They seem to be hanging by a thread. Maybe even ones as fine as Cotton will be at best maintained ruins in 50 years, or less. (If it sounds as if I'm being too gloomy and negative, I've covered some of the same points and tentatively suggested some partial solutions here.)

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1352478?section=official-list-entry

http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/cotton.htm