Sutton with Shopland

I already knew that All Saints was redundant and therefore would be locked but what surprised me was to find that what I took to be Victorian is in fact much older - I blame  restoration! Reading Pevsner makes this a much more interesting building than I casually discounted (in my defence I think had internal access been possible I might not have written this off).

ALL SAINTS. Nave and chancel with weather-boarded belfry with pyramid roof. It rests inside on eight posts or rather on four, each of which has as a reinforcement an additional post along the N and S wall of the nave. Thus a kind of nave with aisles is created. But the curved braces start from the wall-posts and meet in the middle, while the trellis-strutting connects the nave posts from E to W. All this is C15. The rest is Norman, see the good chancel arch with one order of columns with scalloped capitals and a corresponding roll-moulding in the arch. Ornamental painting, renewed. Norman windows in the nave, and remains in the chancel. Also in the chancel a C13 lancet window. Also C13 the nave S door. - Doorway with three orders of columns and manifold moulding of the arches. The S porch has a round headed doorway dated 1633. - FONT. C13, of the Purbeck type, with five pointed shallow arcades on each side. - COMMUNION RAIL. Later C17. - PANELLING. Early C17, in the porch, probably from somewhere else. - PLATE. Cup on baluster stem of 1601.

SUTTON. A tiny place on the banks of the River Roach, it is bounded on the west by Fleet Creek. An avenue of many kinds of trees lines the road from Southend as it draws near the Norman church, on which is a wooden bell-turret of the 15th century. We come into the church through a timber porch with 1633 in the sunk spandrels of the outer archway. The porch has preserved from the weather a splendid doorway of the 13th century, the age when Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals were rising in their grandeur. Six shafts support the deeply cut mouldings of its arch, which is by far the finest possession of the village. Inside, the Norman chancel arch forms a neat frame for three modern pointed windows.

Flickr.