St Mary at Stoke

St Mary at Stoke, Ipswich
Saint Mary at Stoke from the front entrance
St Mary at Stoke, Ipswich
Location in Suffolk
Coordinates: 52°03′01″N 1°09′11″E / 52.050202°N 1.152956°E / 52.050202; 1.152956
Location Ipswich, Suffolk
Country England
Denomination Anglican

Saint Mary at Stoke is a Grade I listed Anglican church in the Old Stoke area of Ipswich.[1] on the junction of Stoke Street and Belstead Road in Ipswich, Suffolk.

The church stands in a prominent position near the foot of a ridge, just south west of Stoke Bridge and the town centre. Its parish was a small farming community which saw a great increase in population with the coming of the railway to this part of Ipswich. It was once governed by Ely, a fact lightly made much of by a politician of Stoke.[2] In 1995 its parish was subsumed into the South West Ipswich Team Ministry in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.[3]

The building is made up of a small medieval church and a large Victorian extension designed by William Butterfield in 1872.[4] A church has existed on this site since the 10th Century. It is probably one of the St Marys mentioned in the Domesday Book.[5]

The original nave (now the north aisle) has a medieval single hammer beam roof, with moulded wall plates, angels with shields at the ends of the hammer beams, and figures underneath.[6] The angels are Victorian replacements for those destroyed by iconoclasts. The church was visited by William Dowsing. There is a medieval piscina.

References

  1. ↑ Going Over Stoke by Linda Walker, BBC Local History
  2. ↑ A History of Ipswich, Robert Malster, quoted in Ipswich was once part of Stoke Archived 2011-08-12 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
  4. ↑ St Mary at Stoke, Ipswich from the Suffolk Churches website by Simon Knott
  5. ↑ Medieval English urban history - Ipswich
  6. ↑ Ipswich Churches Ancient & Modern, Roy Tricker, 1982, ISBN 0-9507064-9-3
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