St. Peter's Parish Church, Bruisyard

This ancient church stands on gently rising ground overlooking the River Alde. Its antiquity is confirmed by Saxon features evident in the tower's flint work. Some believe the origin of the round tower has an even earlier date and suggest it was originally built by a Count of the Saxon Shore as a defensive structure to cover the ford in the river below. We do know that small barges could sail upstream as far as Laxfield until Napoleonic times. It is intriguing to reflect that if the tower were indeed used to watch for raiders sailing inland from the North Sea, then it would qualify as a kind of Romano-British early warning system!

Dedicated to St. Peter, there is evidence to indicate that at one time the church's dedication included St.Mary - as the figures in the Victorian east window suggest. This is reinforced by the knowledge that Bruisyard Abbey (now Bruisyard Hall) was dedicated to St. Mary (of the) Annunciation.

The Norman north door has been blocked for many years. The nave has a simple arch-braced roof. The braces from the principals to the ridge are ornamented with small carved figures. The icons fixed to the rood beam represent St. Francis and St. Clare. They were made by the present-day Poor Clares at Arundel and given to the church in an exchange of presents to mark the new millenium. The rood stair is encassed in a massive buttress behind the simple wainscot pulpit dated to the 18th century. This pulpit has a tester which works remarkably well to amplify the preacher's voice. The fine set of Laudian altar rails, now fixed at th chancel step, were moved from their original position presumably when the pulpit was installed. The present altar rails are Victorian. The altar itself is a simple Jacobean table. The south window, near the pulpit, with its pleasant brick mullions and tracery, has quaintly dated graffiti scratched into the glass by a glazier who, hopefully, could glaze better than he could write. The font dates from the 15th century and is typical of the kind often seen in Suffolk churches. Its bowl is ornamented with shields and the shaft supported by seated lions. The bowl was split, in centuries gone by, when a staple was driven into the stone to provide for a locked font-cover. The present cover is modern. In the nave is displayed a set of Royal Arms which, it is proudly claimed, must be the worst executed in England! Painted on rough sacking, it is a sort of approximation to the Arms of the House of Hanover before the Peace of Amiens (1802) when it was agreed that the lilies of France should no longer be incorporated in the Arms of England. In the south wall of the chancel there is a simple ogee-headed piscina which is still in regular use, as is the impressive silver communion plate bearing the date 1564.

Two duchesses of the House of Plantagenet who died in the Abbey of the Poor Clares at Bruisyard lie buried beneath the nave floor; only the matrices of their small brasses remain. Also buried here is one of their confessors, Fr.Simon Tunstead who was the 23rd English Provincial of the Order of Friars Minor. He died in 1369 and, since he had an inevitably wide knowledge of Franciscan houses throughout England, it is intriguing that he chose this tiny church as fis final resting place.

The Church's south transept has long been used as a vestry and was built in the reign of Elizabeth 1, incorporating material from Bruisyard Abbey. Its builder was Michael Hare, a staunch Catholic and one-time privy councillor to Queen Mary, who had acquired the the Abbey's land and buildings from King Henry VIII following the dissolution. He and two of his wives are buried here. The brass of his effigy is missing but the brasses of the two ladies are there, providing excellent examples of what the well-dressed lady was wearing in 1611. The splendid Tudor hall (know known as Bruisyard Hall) he built on the site of the Abbey (about 1 km east of the church) still stands.

The parish bier is housed in the Hare chapel and on adjacent wall is an interesting set of Ten Commandments printed on paper and dated 1794.

The round, inexplicably tapered flint tower with massive walls, houses one bell. It was cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and hung here at the beginning of this millenium. Given in memory of a former parishioner, it now rings out from a belfry which once housed three medieval bells.

The church used to have a finely embroidered 13th century psalter, known as the Felbrigg Psalter, used by one of the nuns at Bruisyard. This, the oldest known English embroidery on a book, is now in the British Library. Its covers may well have been the work of the nuns here, but it was probably written and illuminated in Northern France in the mid-13th century. It belonged originally to Sister Anne Felbrigge, whose father was standard bearer to Richard II and whose mother was a cousin of Richard's queen, Anne of Bohemia. The psalter carries a note recording its transfer to the Abbey on the death of Sister Anne. Two embroidered panels, depicting the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, are set into the binding of the manuscript and, although very worn, the embroidery is a fine example of English work. The panels are worked in coloured silks and silver gilt thread on a twofold linen ground (a fine upper layer over a thicker lower one). The stitches used are split stitch for the silk whilst the metal threads are surface-couched on the background in a chevron pattern. This method of attaching the threads was very rare in England at this time. A close inspection of the remaining metal threads shows their construction: a thin layer of silver gilt wound around a core of silver thread. Where the coloured silk threads survive they show various shades of greens, blues and grey, browns, fawn and white, and a striking deep rose pink.

The Order of the Poor Clares, named after their founder, St.Clare of Assisi who was granted the 'privilege of poverty' by Pope Gregory IX on 17 September 1228, were introduced into England by Blanche, Queen of Navarre, the wife of Edward, Earl of Lancaster at the end of the 13th century. The Abbey of Minoresses at Bruisyard in Suffolk was founded in October 1367 by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who replaced the chantry priests' college (remembered in the name of College Farm nearby) on this site by nuns of the Order of St Clare. It was the fourth foundation of this order in England, the first being in the parish of St. Botolph's without Aldgate, London, 1293-4, on the site now called the Minories. The second foundation was at Waterbeach near Cambridge and the third at Denny in the same district. It is interesting to note that thirteen sisters from Denny formed the first community at Bruisyard. These Minoresses followed what is called the 'Isabella Rule', the rule approved by pope Urban IV in 1263 for Isabella, sister of St.Louis and her convent at Longchamp near Paris. The Minoresses were allowed to own property in common but kept enclosure: '.....each woman who shall be brought to this order for to nyze (draw nigh) to our Lord Jesus Christ and to His full sweet Mother should dwell all the days of her life enclosed as a treasure kept to the sovereign king.' They were under the authority of the Friars Minor who provided them with chaplains and confessors. They wore a brown habit, white kerchief and black veil. Bruisyard was always a small house though their annual revenues were valued at £561 12s 1d when suppressed in 1542 after a licenced reprieve of three years granted by King Henry VIII. This income was derived from lands, tenements and rents in places as far afield as Debenham and Sawston. Maria Page who was Abess at this time signed the surrender on the Abbey.

St Peters' is one of six parish churches which belong together in the Upper Alde Benefice within the Diocese of St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich. Fuller information about St.Peter's or any of our sister churches at Badingham, Cransford, Dennington and Rendham will be found on the Benefice's website.