Building record BCC 013 - Church of St Michael

The church is in the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the archdeaconry of Suffolk, Beccles and South Elmham deanery. Status : rectory. Structure : chancel, clerestoried nave, small clerestory, aisles, N and S porches, unfinished, detached tower 92 feet high. A unique feature of the tower are the four corner staircases. The date of the church is late Perpendicular (C15).
It lies on high ground overlooking the Waveney in Beccles town (S1)

Evaluation (2002) and excavation (2003) in advance of tourist information centre in the stand alone tower of the church revealed some stratigraphic layers corresponding to former floor surfaces, and other layers probably deliberately laid down before the construction of the tower in order to strengthen the ground surface. Evidence of burning was also noted in one of the trenches, perhaps directly relating to the fire of Beccles in 1586 (S2)(S3).

At a meeting of the SIA in October 1962 at Beccles the following were exhibited "the sacramental cups (AD 1570) of St Michael's church, Beccles" (S4)

The remains of a flint-bonded wall and the footings of a large tomb or memorial were found below the floor during work to reorder the nave. The wall probably represented the W end of an earlier church, and had been partly cut away when the foundations of the present building were laid during the second half of the 14th century. It was 1.5m thick and spanned the full width of the central nave between the 2 arcades, but did not extend into the area of the N aisle. Building materials that had been salvaged from the demolition of the earlier church, including fragments of dressed stone and Purbeck marble paviours, were recycled into the foundations of the present one.
The base for what would have been a large altar tomb or monument above ground had been truncated just a few centimetres below the current floor level. It comprised a large rectangular block of bonded flint, solidly formed with brick corner quoins, orientated E–W and built into the space between the second and third columns of the S arcade; it measured 2.45m x 1.02m (8ft ½in x 3ft 4in) and almost filled the interval between the piers, suggesting that the memorial had been grandiose. The brick size (10¼ x 4¾ x 2in) implies that the base was constructed around the 15th century, or just as the present church was being completed. It was positioned directly above the N wall of the brick-vaulted crypt beneath the S aisle and the similarity in the brick sizes between the crypt (which has since been converted into a WC) and the tomb base suggests the two funerary features could be related.
A second flint- and brick-built consolidated pad was partially uncovered close to the nave’s W door, within a trench excavated for a new drain. The pad measured 2.82m (9ft 3in) across and its construction combined Purbeck paviours, recycled from a medieval floor, with later bricks and floor-tiles. It was thought to be a base for the organ (built in 1757), which is known to have stood at this end of the church until the mid-19th century. The positions of 5 (unmarked) brick-vaulted tombs, dating from the c.18th–19th centuries, plus 2 undated graves were also recorded
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2021 (S1).