The bench ends are delightful: one is a beautiful praying figure, while the rest are exotic animals. Those with holes in their tops for rush tapers are medieval.
The Tower is the crowning glory of our church. Of the 41 round towers in this county it is certainly amongst the finest. In his Buildings of England series, Nikolaus Pevsner calls it "the most spectacular Norman round tower in Suffolk". The lower part is Saxon and was built for defence purposes against Danish raiders. Later, in the early 12th century, the Normans added the superb blank arcading round the bell-stage, its wide mortar joints indicating its early date. Originally the tower was probably detached, with access by a rope ladder to the opening, which is now on the inside of the church, above the tower arch.
The Porch is in the Perpendicular style and has a holy water stoup. It carries a conventional sundial with Roman numerals, but the number VII is missing. (See sundial page).
The South Door is early Norman with a plain panelled tympanium above. The key escutcheon is 14th century, the adjacent handle-mounting is Norman, and the door hinges are medieval.
Just inside the church on the left is a blind Norman arch. Pevsner believed it to be the original north door moved to this position when the north aisle was built, but this cannot be the case because the carved stone above the right capital is integral both to the tower arch and the blind arch. Norman Scarfe has suggested that it would have made an appropriate background for the font which would have originally stood there.
The Chancel was probably initially a Norman apse, replaced in the 14th century to take account of liturgical change. In 1634 it was ordered that:
...the rayle be made before the Communion Table reaching crosse from North Wall to South Wall neare one yard in height, so thick with pillars that dogs may not get in.
Later that century, a parish register note of 1681 says that:
Major William Crofts of Saxham Parva for ye more convenient receiving of ye Lord's supper raised ye east end of ye chancel and railed in ye communion table.
The Revd. Lillie brought the elegant Georgian altar rails from a redundant chapel in Little Livermere in 1947, at a cost of £25 plus £2 for the white pamments.
Set into the south wall near the rector's chair is a roundel carved with the arms of Leeds: a fesse between three spread-eagles, crest a cock. Samuel Leeds, son of the Headmaster of the Grammar School in Bury, was Rector here from 1720 to 1750. An exterior tablet to his memory is in the north wall of the church. There he is described as vir eruditus, perubanus et modestus: a scholarly and modest man of unassuming ways.
At the apex of the chancel arch is the hook, on which the crucifix or rood used to be hung, above the timber rood-screen which separated the nave from the chencel before the Reformation. There is also the groove for the typanum on which there was often a painted scene of the Doom or Last Judgement.
Stained Glass. Ernest R Suffling of Maida Vale made the east window (1899), the adjoining south window and the two south windows in the nave. The one nearest the door is signed and dated 1900. The memorial window to Lt.Col. Crofts of 1910 was made by the celebrated firm of Heaton, Butler and Bayne, and is also signed, towards the bottom of the middle light.
Before the installation of these windows there was much armorial glass in the church; perhaps some of it had come from Little Saxham Hall after its demolition in 1773. One remaining shield in the south window by the altar is of particular interest. The arms represent Drury quartering Hervey impaling Poley of Badley, and as the dexter side has been inserted in reverse, the shield is probably not in its original form.
Thomas (d.1477), son of John Hervey of Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, married Jane, daughter and heiress of Henry Drury of Ickworth and it was by this marriage that Ickworth came to the Hervey family. Their daughter Elizabeth married John Crofts of West Stow and the son of this marriage, Sir John Crofts, bought Little Saxham Hall soon after 1531. Sir John did not live at Saxham, preferring his newer house at West Stow. His grandson, Thomas, was the first of the Crofts family to live permanently here. He married Susan, daughter of John Poley of Badley, with whom he had twelve children.
The Vestry was built as a chantry chapel in 1520 and dedicated to Our Lady and St John the Evangelist, by Sir Thomas Lucas. He married Elizabeth Kemys from Monmouthshire and was appointed Solicitor-General to King Henry VII, having been promoted to that office from the household of the King's uncle, Jasper Tudor. To his credit, Lucas was no friend of Thomas Wolsey, being sent to the Tower for a short period in 1516 for speaking scandalous words of the Lord Cardinal.
In his will Sir Thomas Lucas decreed that the chancel bee renewed aboute embattiled as the Church is by myne executors at my charge. His executors, however, failed him. Whilst the tower and nave are indeed crenellated, the chancel remains unadorned. Under the archway between his chapel and the chancel, Sir Thomas had built a table-tomb for himself. However, after he died in 1531 he was buried in London and his chantry chapel was taken over by the Crofts family who made it into their own memorial chapel. Sir John Crofts bought Sir Thomas' mansion, Little Saxham Hall, which was similar in design and magnificence to Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk.
The vestry now houses the massive baroque monument to William, 1st Baron Crofts (d. 1677) and his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, by Abraham Storey. The Lucas tomb was replaced in the roughest possible manner with fragments of it being used to block up the archway. In his Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660 - 1851, Rupert Gunnis wrote,
Storey's monuments are of great importance, his finest being one commemorating Lord and Lady Crofts at Little Saxham, Suffolk, which was erected about 1678. This has a life-sized, semi-recumbent figure of Lord Crofts in full peer's robes, while his wife reclines on a lower table.
It is signed on the right side, Story Fecit, and his initials A.S. appear on the seal which His Lordship is holding. The shield at the bottom carries the arms of Crofts impaling Spencer.
On the east wall of the vestry there are two monuments: a fine one to Elizabeth Crofts, who died on 1st October 1642, with a fulsome eulogy, four cherubs and a rare topless bust. This is an unusual feature for the Commonwealth, but forshadows the liberated age of the Restoration. Secondly, a good classical monument signed by William Palmer, a prominent sculptor who had worked under John Nost, to Anne Crofts who left this world for a better Sept. 22, 1727. On the west wall there is a rather heavy monument to her husband, William Crofts, who died in 1694.
The North Aisle was built in the early 14th century in the Decorated style. To the right of the door of the vestry, the staircase to the rood loft begins some six feet above floor level, so presumably there was a set of wooden steps or a ladder to reach it. Beneath this opening is a piscina which would have served the side altar.
The Organ came from a redundant chapel in Downham Market and was installed in 1966. It was made by the highly regarded firm of Norman & Beard and has a swell of four stops (peus tremulant), great four stops, pedal one stop and three couplers with a trigger swell and a full concave and radiating pedal board of two and a half octaves.
The Bells consist of two trebles on the floor and one tenor hung in the tower. The treble standing by the north door, called Gabriel, and that by the entrance, were probably cast by Richard Brayser II of Norwich soon after 1500. He was Mayor of Norwich in 1510 and died in 1513. The tenor in the tower is an early work of Thomas Cheese of Bury St Edmunds and is dated 1603. His other bells cover the period 1618 - 1632.
Woodwork. Two parts of the original rood-screen now reside in the north-west corner of the church. The oak extending Stuart bier is a rare survival and the smallest bier was made by Mr Sansom, on the death of one of his children in the late 19th century.
The bench ends are delightful: one is a beautiful praying figure, while the rest are exotic animals. Those with holes in their tops for rush tapers are medieval.
The handsome carved oak eagle lectern was given in memory of Kate Bayley, who died in 1893. The oak hymnboard was carved and presented in 1913 by Mrs Louise Cecelia Bazalgette Lucas Stratton, a direct descendant of Sir Thomas Lucas. She also carved the oak panelling on either side of the Lucas monument in the chancel, incorporating in the frieze on the left side, arms of Lucas, Aspall, Lucas with Kemys in pretence, Petchy and Gedding and, on the right side, those of Morieux, Lucas, Kemys quartering Griffith ap Rees, Brampton and Kemys.
The Jacobean pulpit was restored, and the testor added, in memory of the Revd. W.B. Hall (Rector 1852 - 1885). He combined the incumbency with being agent to Lord Bristol at Ickworth Park. Mr Hall changed the road pattern of the village by diverting the Bury-Barrow road so that it now runs past the north side of the church instead of the south. He was concerned that the increased volume of traffic caused by the opening of Saxham & Risby Station in 1854, compromised the privacy of his rectory. The Bishop of Ely, in whose diocese Little Saxham then lay, wrote, I have no great opinion of this Mr Hall.
With thanks to John Wolton and Julia Abel Smith for the above text.
The church was without heating and lighting until June 1963. Electricity reached the Rectory in 1931 and an estimate of £100 to extend power into the church was at the time considered too expensive.