St Mary, Stoke by Nayland

St Mary’s is a Grade I Church of England parish church on School Street, Stoke by Nayland, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: a great fifteenth-century wool church whose west tower is a landmark of Dedham Vale and was painted by John Constable.

Overview

Historic England lists a fine fifteenth-century church of freestone rubble and brick with stone dressings. Nave and aisles have castellated parapets and Perpendicular windows. The building incorporates late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century work, including the south porch, St Edmund’s Chapel (built about 1318 by John de Peyton) and part of the aisle wall. A late Norman piscina in the north chapel is the only surviving fragment of the original Norman church recorded in Domesday. The imposing west tower, about 120 feet high, is in four stages with an embattled parapet, crocketed pinnacles and diagonal buttresses with canopied niches. The nave has six tall arches and a clerestory. The fifteenth-century octagonal font is carved with the Evangelists’ symbols, a band of cherubs and ogee niches; its stepped base includes a shield of Edward IV. There are fifteenth-century brasses and a standing wall monument to Sir Francis Mannock of Giffords Hall (1634).

The church is open daily during daylight hours. Parts of the south aisle and chancel needed structural repair after masonry collapse in 2020.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1200030
• Nayland churches
• Wikipedia: St Mary's Church, Stoke-by-Nayland