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.