IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Kettlebaston, IPSWICH, IP7 7QA

This mown path links Back Lane to the churchyard. Smoke from a bonfire at neighbouring Kettlebaston Hall can be seen over the hedge to the right.

Thatched cottage at Kettlebaston, Suffolk.

https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/Monument/MSF2647

On the south-eastern buttress of St Mary's Church in Kettlebaston is this very rare survival of a niche made to house an outdoor shrine, a relief showing the Coronation of Our Lady, which is the title of the church's dedication (the anniversary on 22 August being now marked by a music festival on the following weekend). The 14th-century original from Kettlebaston is now in the British Museum and the church now has a replica made in 1947. However, the wrought iron glazed doors are still supported by the original medieval hinges.

This decorative screen was designed in the early years of the twentieth century, as a replacement for the one destroyed in the sixteenth century, by the Revd. Ernest Geldart, a parish priest in Essex who had trained as an architect. It was not fully coloured until the 1950s, when Enid Chadwick of Walsingham added the figures of six English saints. From left to right, they are: St Felix, who brought Christianity into East Anglia, and died as the first bishop of Dunwich in 648; St Thomas More, who was beheaded in 1535 for his resistance to Henry VIII; St Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral in 1170 for opposing Henry II; St John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, executed in 1535; St Alban, the first recorded martyr in England; and St Fursey, an Irish missionary who established the first monastery in East Anglia, at Burgh Castle, and died in 648.

The organ in St Mary's church is a Lieblich, built by T.C. Lewis and brought from Wattisham in 1977. As there is no permanent electricity supply to the church, it is still pumped by hand, using the lever at the right, and lit by four candles (no doubt to the delight of Two Ronnies fans!)