St Peter's

Image: © Tiger Taken: 27 May 2017

The name of this private property preserves the dedication of the old village church which was sold off under the Pastoral Measure of 1968 (described by the ecclesiologist Simon Knott as a "brief flirtation with lunacy") . The chancel has been sensitively converted into a dwelling (as betrayed by the Velux windows) and the nave retained with little alteration as a studio. The churchyard has been landscaped to provide a garden, apart from a small section to the west which is approached by public path lined with relocated gravestones - see Adrian Pye's Image The brick south porch, Tudor but probably rather later than the early 16th-century Image, conceals a 12th-century doorway noted by Pevsner in 1961 as having one order of shafts and a single zigzag in the arch. Munro Cautley suggests that the site may once have been a Roman camp, lying as it does just off a military road. Both Cautley (who visited in 1937) and Arthur Mee (in 1941) were intrigued not only by the Norman doorway but also by the remains of a pulley attached to the collar of the principal beam west of the chancel arch, once used to raise the lamp that used to burn before the altar. St Peter's is now a private property and is not open to the public. www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/ubbeston.htm

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