The New Hand-Book to Lowestoft and Its Environs

by Anonymous

THE CHURCH.

The church ‘standing by the roadside in its own little garden of Gethsemane,’ is a fine old building dedicated to St. Margaret, situated about half a mile westward of the town, towards which all the streets on the west side tend, as to a common centre. The present building is supposed to have been founded about the middle of the fourteenth century, (on the site of a more ancient fabric, to which the tower, from its inferior proportions and mean construction, is concluded to have belonged,) though much of the tracery which enriches its windows, is supposed to be referable to a later era.

The church is with good reason supposed to have been built by the funds supplied from the treasury of the priory of St. Bartholomew, to which establishment the impropriation of the town belonged. The dimensions of the church are as follows:—Its length, 182 feet; width, 62 feet; height, 43 feet. It comprises a nave, chancel, two aisles, north and south porches, and a square tower, surmounted by a tapering spire of timber, covered with lead, the extreme height of which is 120 feet. On the roof of the south porch are to be seen the popish emblems of the Holy Trinity, and of our Lord’s passion; and over the porch is a room called the “maids chamber,” formerly inhabited by two maiden sisters who lived a recluse life, and who left money for the sinking of two wells, situated between the church and the infirmary, called the Basket Wells; Basket being a corruption of Bess and Kate, the names of the donors. Under the chancel floor is a well wrought crypt of stone, entered by a winding staircase from the interior of the north wall; and at the west end of the nave is a long narrow arch, supposed to have been originally used as a penitent’s porch, agreeably to the custom of the ancient church.

The great east window is filled with stained glass, painted, and presented by Mr. Robert Allen, a bookseller of Lowestoft, whose first attempt at staining may be seen over his shop, in the High street, now occupied by Mr. Thos. Crowe.

A large brass eagle, formerly used as a lecturn, stands with outspread wings in the chancel, supporting an old Black letter Bible.

The Font is very elegant, but has been much defaced. The rich series of figures with which it was, and still is, partially adorned, were mutilated by one Francis Jessope, who, with a commission from the Earl of Manchester to take away from gravestones all inscriptions on which he found “orate pro anima” (pray for the soul), tore up most of the ancient brasses which were in the church, and visited the images of the saints with his peculiar displeasure.

One inscription escaped his search.

Orate p.aia dne Margarete Parker qe obitt po
die marciz ao dni mo bco bizo cui aie ppiciet de.

It has frequently been our lot to hear the most opprobrious epithets applied to the Iconoclasts of the times of Reformation; but, however much we may regret the indiscriminate manner in which they performed their mission, we must remember, that “their backs were yet sore with the burdens which had been laid upon them; their indignation fierce at the impostures and rapine which they had actually witnessed: theirs would have been a lukewarm zeal indeed, had it not urged them to abolish even the innocent memorials of that wickedness, which had been wrought in their eyesight, on every hill and under every tree. Another period succeeds, in which the vices of a system are no longer distinctly remembered, and contemplated only through the softening medium of antiquity, and the services of the Iconoclast and the motives on which he acted are all forgotten; and he is regarded with mere horror as an incarnate spirit of destruction.” [48]

In the chancel lies buried Thomas Scroope, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, and vicar of this parish. His effigy in brass, habited in his episcopal robes, with a crosier in one hand, and his pastoral staff in the other, was formerly to be seen on a large stone, surrounded by a circumscription, and ornamented with divers heraldic devices, but all have long since disappeared.

He was first a monk of the order of St. Benedict; passed to the profession of a Dominican; then became a Carmelite, and preached the gospel in hair and sackcloth round the country; then became an Anchorite and so continued twenty years; was made Bishop of Dromore by the Pope; then quitted his bishoprick; came into these eastern counties, and went abroad in the neighbourhood barefoot, preaching, teaching, and dispensing alms; and died in Lowestoft, January 15th, 1491, at the age of a hundred years.

In the church there are many Monuments, the inscriptions of which will interest and amuse the reader; some are simple narrative, others are written in the inflated style peculiar to the age in which they were composed; most of them tell their own tales, it is not necessary, therefore, to transfer them to our pages. One, however, very short, begs to be noticed; it is found in the middle aisle; a small brass simply bears the initials,

On the stone which bears this brass, there was formerly the effigy of a person standing in a praying position, with an inscription underneath, but these brasses are all stripped from their matrices. This is most probably the index to the grave of Robert Inglesse or Ingloss, Esq., who died in 1365, and was buried in this church. This, from its antiquity, is worth a special notice.

“In the churchyard are a few flowers and much green grass; and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs, representing a dial plate of human life, on which the hours and minutes are the graves of men.” Here is the tomb of John Barker, Esq.; [50] the resting place of Sir J. E. Smith, the celebrated botanist; the grave of the Rev. James Alderson, a dissenting minister; and the dust of the Rev. B. Ritson, an estimable clergyman: here, all ranks and conditions of men mingle their undistinguishable dust; here, are high and low, rich and poor, together; here, it seems as though all strifes are hushed and discords forgotten—one stone, however, close to the wall, on the west side of the churchyard, lifts its querulous head to perpetuate the remembrance of a family disagreement; it is raised to the memory of Charles Ward, and informs the visiter, who goes to meditate among the tombs that his heart may be made better, that “it is not erected by Susan his (i.e. Mr. Ward’s) wife; she erected a stone to John Salter, her second husband, forgetting the affection of her first husband,” it moreover begs that “no one may disturb his bones.”

At the east side of the churchyard and towards the northern corner, may be found two or three versions of the sailor’s favourite epitaph, wherein “Boreas’s blasts” are very powerful ingredients.

The other building in which worship is conducted in the Episcopalian mode, is St. Peters Chapel, which is a neat building, in the street leading from the south part of the town to the Beccles road. The first stone was laid on the 6th of August, 1832, by the Rev. F. Cunningham, the vicar of Lowestoft. The building was consecrated by Dr. C. Sumner, Lord Bishop of Winchester, on the 15th of August, 1833.

Church rates are not levied in this parish, the lands belonging to the church being amply sufficient to keep it in repair. This being the case, those unseemly feuds, which frequently arise in parishes where this obnoxious tax is imposed, do not trouble the inhabitants. Suckling wishes it to be understood that “church rates have been occasionally raised,” and quotes only one instance, and that, as far back as 1716: the memory of this might as well have been buried in the “tomb of all the Capulets.”

The deceased Vicars of note, are Scroope, before mentioned; William Whiston, who succeeded Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge; John Tanner, brother of Bishop Tanner, who purchased the impropriation; Robert Potter, the translator of the three great writers of greek drama.

2. The Independents have long had a place of worship in the town. Before the erection of their present chapel in 1695, they worshipped in a barn, situated in the Blue Anchor lane, where the Rev. Mr. Emlyn, a learned man, was for a short time minister: since that time there has been a long succession of ministers, and the congregation has experienced many vicissitudes. The chapel has, within the last few years, been altered and greatly improved, and has now a very respectable appearance. It is situated in the High street, near the old market plain.

3. The Wesleyan Society in this town was formed in 1761, under the auspices of the Rev. John Wesley, who first preached on a spot of ground in Martin’s score, near the Star hotel.

In 1776 their present place of worship was opened on November the 19th, when the Rev. John Wesley preached in the morning, from Rev. xx. 10; and in the afternoon, from Isaiah lxvi. 8 and 9. The society is in a flourishing condition. Their place of worship is situated in Frary lane, at the back of the Crown and Anchor hotel.

4. The Baptists have a chapel opposite the vicarage. It was built in 1813, chiefly through the generosity of R. Kemp, Esq. of Yarmouth. S. M. Peto, Esq., M. P., has taken great interest in the prosperity of the cause, has built a commodious school room, and contemplates the erection of a larger chapel in a more convenient situation. The Rev. J. E. Dovey is the present minister.

5. The Primitive Methodists have a place of worship situated on the beach, (near the bottom of Denny’s score,) among that class of the inhabitants who are generally least disposed to go in quest of religious instruction, and here they usefully employ themselves in their important work.