St Mary le Tower, Ipswich

St Mary-le-Tower is the civic church of Ipswich, a Grade II* parish church on Tower Street in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, redesignated Ipswich Minster in January 2025.

Overview

Historic England records a church of medieval origins, largely rebuilt between 1850 and 1870 by Richard Makilwaine Phipson. The plan comprises a tower above a south entrance, nave with north and south aisles, chancel, Lady Chapel and vestries. The tower, with recessed spire, rises to 53.5 metres and has chequered flushwork, paired lancets, openwork parapets and pinnacles. Medieval fabric survives in the mid-fifteenth-century five-bay nave arcades, a late-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth-century south chancel arcade, and a thirteenth-century inner doorway reset under the tower. A church is recorded here from at least the Domesday Book; the Ipswich town charter of 1200 was written in the churchyard.

Interior fittings include a fifteenth-century octagonal font carved with lions, an oak pulpit of about 1700, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century brasses, seventeenth-century monuments to William Smart and Sir Francis Bacon, a Father Willis organ of 1863–64, and east and west windows by Clayton and Bell. The rebuilding was funded by the banker George Bacon. Wikipedia and the parish site record the 2025 minster designation; the civic church remains in the parish of Ipswich St Mary-le-Tower.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1235800
• Ipswich Minster
• Suffolk Churches: St Mary le Tower