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dedication unknown, Borley

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Borley is a tiny hamlet not far from the high street of the large Suffolk village of Long Melford, a quarter of a mile from the Suffolk border. Its church is entirely a Suffolk church in style, and more memorable than this in any case is the setting, on the edge of the hamlet and with a topiary yew avenue leading up to the 15th Century brick porch, the one concession to typical Essex materials. The exterior is encased in rendering which makes it hard to tell too much about its building history, but the east wall with its image niches above a Perpendicular window and the battlemented tower suggest a late date for a substantial rebuilding, probably early 16th Century. As at neighbouring Liston the medieval dedication has been lost, and the church has never been rededicated. You step into a small, aisleless church dominated by the large late 16th Century bedstead memorial to Sir Edward and Frances Waldegrave. They lie together with expressions which will not be forgotten in a hurry. The Waldegraves were Lords of the Manor, but they were incarcerated in the Tower of London for allowing Mass to be said at Borley Manor, where Edward died in 1561. His wife lived for almost another forty years. Curiously the memorial is not made of marble at all, but of clunch painted to look like marble. Even more rustic is the kneeling figure of Magdala Southcote who was born a Waldegrave. She died in 1599 and as Pevsner observes she is painted, not good. James Bettley, in his revision of the Buildings of England volume for Essex, notes the ledgerstone in the floor nearby to 18th Century rector Humphrey Burroughs, who was the uncle of the artist Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough came from Sudbury, a couple of miles off. Otherwise the church is pretty much entirely of its 19th Century restoration, with glass by Hardman & Co and Edward Suffling. In the 1930s the parish of Borley became the focus of notoriety thanks to the activities of Harry Price, a self-proclaimed 'ghost-hunter'. Price elaborated on the hoaxing and spoofing of the successive rectors and their families of the time. As a result of his books, Borley Rectory became known as 'the most haunted house in England'. The hokum and fakery still attracts a lunatic fringe of sensation-seekers with nothing better to do, and hence the church is ordinarily kept locked, unusually for north Essex. An unlikely knock-on effect of the events at Borley was what happened at nearby Middleton - one might even imagine there was something in the water around here which encouraged such shameless self-delusion. The real ghosts of Borley, of course, are the Waldegraves, memorialised in wide-eyed terror. Simon Knott, January 2022 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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home - index - latest - e-mail
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Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk