Holy Trinity with St Catherine, Long Melford
Holy Trinity with St Catherine, Long Melford
Holy Trinity is a Grade I late Perpendicular parish church on Church Walk, Long Melford, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. It is one of the great wool churches of East Anglia.
- Location
- Long Melford, Suffolk
- Country
- England
- County
- Suffolk
- City / town
- Long Melford
- Address
- Church Walk, Long Melford, Suffolk, CO10 9DL
- Postcode
- CO10 9DL
- Built
- c.1460–1495; Lady Chapel 1496; west tower 1898–1903
- Architect
- G F Bodley (west tower, 1898–1903)
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Holy Trinity
- Diocese
- St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
- Parish
- Long Melford
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Late Perpendicular
- Materials
- Flint and stone with flushwork; west tower by Bodley
- Grid reference
- TL 865 467
- Opening hours
- Sorry, there are no regular opening times for this church.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic England records a clerestoried nave and chancel rebuilt on the site of an earlier church between about 1460 and 1495. The five west bays retain fourteenth-century piers. The Lady Chapel, added by the Cloptons of Kentwell Hall in 1496, is designed as an interior shrine with an ambulatory. G. F. Bodley built the west tower in 1898–1903. The church, including the Lady Chapel, is some 250 feet long. Fabric is flint and stone with richly ornamented flushwork on the south side. Exterior memorial inscriptions in decorative bands date the clerestory to 1481, the south chapel to 1484 and the Lady Chapel to 1496.
Inside, the nave and chancel have moulded arch-braced cambered beams. The Clopton chapel holds fifteenth- and sixteenth-century brasses; the adjoining chantry has the Purbeck marble tomb of John Clopton (d. 1497). South of the altar is the monument to Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls (d. 1581), designed by Cornelius Cure. A small alabaster Adoration of the Magi of about 1350, probably from the earlier church, is set in the north nave wall.