Blythburgh

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Blythburgh is an English village in the coastal Suffolk marshes, under a hundred miles from London, and four miles from the North Sea at Southwold. It has a population of about 300. Blythburgh is best known for its church, Holy Trinity, and its role in the Aldeburgh Festival.

[edit] Railway

Blythburgh had a railway station on the narrow gauge Southwold Railway, but this closed, with the rest of the line, on 11 April 1929.

[edit] Holy Trinity church

Known as the Cathedral of the Marshes. Blythburgh was one of the earliest Christian sites in East Anglia. There was a church there in 654 to which the bodies of the Anglian King Anna and his son were brought after their deaths in battle at Bulcamp with the Mercian King Penda. At the time of the Norman Conquest Blythburgh was part of the royal estate and had one of the richest churches in Suffolk, possibly a Saxon Minster, with two daughter churches. It was probably the rich parent church that was granted by King Henry I to Augustinian canons some time between 1116 and 1147, becoming the priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A daughter church is likely to have been the predecessor of Holy Trinity. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. In the movement to dissolve the monasteries, the suppression of the priory was authorised in 1528 and it was dissolved in 1537, the reversion of the property being granted to local gentleman Sir Arthur Hopton in 1548.

The church underwent a series of disasters, man-made and natural. The most dramatic of the latter variety came in August 1577, when a storm hit the area, and during morning service lightning hit the church, "cleft the door, and returning to the steeple rent the timber, [and] brake the chimes". The falling spire damaged the font and the roof (which wasn't repaired until 1782), destroying the angels in the west end bays. The door shows marks, which have the appearance of burns caused by candle flames, which the credulous associate with the devil's fingerprints. They have been asspociated with the 'Black Shuck' legend.

During the 17th century Holy Trinity was badly damaged when Parliament set out to remove what the puritans deemed to be superstitious ornamentation from churches; Blythburgh was assigned to William Dowsing, a local puritan, and on 8 April 1644 he went to the church and ordered the removal of "twenty superstitious pictures, one on the outside of the church; two crosses, one on the porch and another on the steeple; and twenty cherubim to be taken down in the church and chancel [...] and gave order to take down above 200 more within eight days".

General neglect also played its part in the church's deterioration, resulting in part from rural poverty, and in part from the rise of Methodism (a Primitive Methodist chapel was founded in the village in the 1830s).

By the late 19th century the church was in a very poor state of repair, and in 1881 a restoration fund made possible the repair of the church, and then its maintenance after its reopening in 1884. The restoration was controversial with William Morris and his Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings opposed to the radical plans of the local building committee. Shortage of funds restricted the work that could be done. While the fabric was repaired, modern taste ruled out any return to the 15th-century colour scheme of the church; the thirty-six angels, set back to back in pairs on the arch-braced, firred, tie-beam roof had been brightly painted in red and green with much use made of tin foil and gold leaf. A modern reproduction is mounted above the south door.

In 1962 the acoustic of the building was discovered by Benjamin Britten, and some of the concerts of the Aldeburgh Festival are performed in the church.

[edit] Sources and external links

• Hugh Roberts, Mary Montague, & Barry Naylor. Holy Trinity, Blythburgh: Cathedral of the Marshes. Jarrold Publishing, 1999.
• History Notes — Blythburgh Society
• Holy trinity, Blythburgh — The Suffolk Churches Site
• Blythburgh, Suffolk — photographs of the church and its scorched door
• Alan Mackley, Mary Montague. 'Blythburgh. A Suffolk Village'. Blythburgh Church and Jarrold Publishing, 2003.
• [1] — OneSuffolk
• Alan Mackley (ed.). 'The Poaching Priors of Blythburgh'. Blythburgh Society, 2002.