St Mary, Kersey

St Mary's is a Grade I parish church on Church Hill, standing on high ground south of Kersey village, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

Overview

Historic England records a fourteenth- and fifteenth-century flint and stone church. The north aisle was built about 1335, when the tower foundations were laid; the four-stage west tower was completed in 1481. It has diagonal buttresses, a castellated parapet with flint chequerwork and an octagonal stair turret, and is a landmark over the Brett valley. The two-bay south porch has buttresses rising to crocketed pinnacles, chequerwork panels and a castellated parapet; the ceiling has moulded and carved beams. The north porch is similar but plainer. The chancel was rebuilt in 1862.

The Kersey parish history dates the south nave wall to the twelfth century, as a Norman rebuild of a Saxon church. Work paused at the Black Death in 1349; in the fifteenth century the nave walls were raised, new windows inserted and a new ceiling built. The nave roof has hammer beams alternating with tie beams and arched braces. Fittings include a twelfth-century font and a fifteenth-century font, a fifteenth-century lectern and chancel screen, and a defaced stone frieze in the north aisle. The north aisle held a medieval pilgrimage shrine, destroyed around the Civil War and re-hallowed on 8 March 2020.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1351459
• Kersey Parish Council: history of St Mary's
• Wikipedia: St Mary's Church, Kersey