St Bartholomew, Groton

St Bartholomew’s is a Grade I parish church on Church Street, Groton, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, a fifteenth-century flint church closely linked with the Winthrop family of Massachusetts.

Overview

Historic England lists a fifteenth-century flint building with stone dressings. The lower part of the west tower is thirteenth-century. The church was restored in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The west tower has diagonal buttresses and a castellated parapet with flint panel work; the nave, aisles and south porch also have castellated parapets. Listing NGR is TL 95969 41680.

The listing states that the main historical interest is the connection with the Winthrop family. John Winthrop (d.1649) led the Puritan emigration to New England in 1630, helped found Boston, and became the first governor of Massachusetts. Suffolk archaeological monitoring recorded a former western graveyard ditch producing thirteenth-century pottery, thought to have been the boundary before a fifteenth-century enlargement when the church was rebuilt, and showed that the tower already stood when the nave was built. The church is in the Box River Benefice and is open daily.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1037284
• Box River Benefice