Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Assuredly after the 3-1/4 miles to Long Melford, so called from the length
of its street, have been accomplished the excuse needs no making. The
village on one side of the green, the spreading trees of Melford Hall,
itself a typical Elizabethan mansion, the exceptionally stately church and,
last of all, the hill which lends dignity and variety to the whole,
combined to make an ideal halting-place. By all means order tea at one of
the village inns and, after it, make a thorough inspection of the church,
for the interesting particulars concerning which acknowledgment is due to a
monograph, undated and probably published for private circulation,
apparently by the Rev. R. Francis, some time rector. The author, whosoever
he may have been, transcribes much from certain MSS. of 1688 onwards
concerning the former state of the church, and from this we may borrow a
little. "Much about the middle of the Parish of Melford, al's Long Melford,
in Suffolk, upon an hill, most pleasant for air and prospect, there
standeth a large and beautiful Church called Trinity Church, because
dedicated to the Holy and undivided Trinity.... Part of it was an old
erection, viz. the whole North Ile, the Steeple, a great part of the Porch
and p'haps the East End of the South Ile. All the other parts are of a much
later erection, as by the different sort of building, and the several
inscriptions still extant round and about the said Church may most
evidently appear.... The Middle Ile, from the Steeple, exclusive, to the
East End of the Chancell, hath one entire advanced roof, in length 152 ft.
and 6 inches, distant from the pavement beneath 41 feet and 6 inches,
supported on each side with ten arched Pillars, separating the said Middle
Ile from the 2 other Iles, which are in height 24 feet, and in length 135
feet and 4 inches.... The pious Benefactors concerned in the building the
advanced Ile may be known, and let their memories never perish, by the
inscriptions under the Battlements, without the Church, and by like
inscriptions in the windows, undemolished, within the Church." Of this last
sentence an antiquary no doubt could give an exact translation into modern
English, but I must be content to follow the general sense, which is indeed
pretty clear. The reference is to very curious inscriptions, in flints let
into the walls, which, notwithstanding restoration and because it has been
carried out with taste and reverence, still remain in part. The names of
the benefactors follow, amongst them being many Martins, or Martyns, who
are here mentioned to the exclusion of others partly because, when the
church was restored in 1869, the Rev. C. J. Martyn, their patron, bore much
of the expense and their clothmark, a token of the former greatness of Long
Melford and its cause, is frequently mentioned; but most of all because the
monograph, like many another treasure, has been lent to me out of sheer
goodwill by Mr. Paulin Martin, of Abingdon, my neighbour, antiquary and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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