St Mary, Brome

St Mary’s is a Grade II* parish church on The Street at Brome, Suffolk, one of the county’s surviving round-tower churches, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and the North Hartismere Benefice.

Overview

Historic England records a medieval core enlarged and much restored in 1857–63 for Sir Edward Kerrison and the Rev. George Paterson, in a mix of Romanesque and Gothic styles. The plan is nave, chancel, north aisle (including the Cornwallis chapel) and transept, west tower and south porch. Walls are flint rubble with nineteenth-century knapped flint facing, random stone and a flushwork frieze; roofs are slated. The circular tower has a probably twelfth-century base, a narrower octagonal belfry stage perhaps fifteenth-century, and a crenellated stone parapet. The fifteenth-century south porch has a flushwork-panelled façade and a shield once painted with the Cornwallis arms.

The interior has a neo-Norman aisle arcade and mid-nineteenth-century furnishings, including an elaborate stone reredos and pulpit by James Williams of Ipswich and poppyhead benches. The most important survivals are Cornwallis monuments from Brome Hall: recumbent effigies of Sir John Cornwallis (d. 1544) and Sir Thomas Cornwallis (d. 1604) on tomb chests, and wall monuments to Henry Cornwallis (1598), Frederick, Lord Cornwallis (1661) and Elizabeth, Lady Cornwallis (1680). The listing notes complete mid-nineteenth-century stained glass. Brome and Oakley parishes were united in 1751.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1352379
• North Hartismere Benefice