Building record WLB 112 - St Andrew's Church

Church of St Andrew. 130ft by 60ft with tower of four stages 85ft high. Now consists of N aisle, W tower, S porch, 4 bays of S aisle.
History: 1426-1493 - main construction period, replacing earlier building on same site. 1426: Tower built (considered to be one of four best towers in Suffolk). 1493: Church dedicated.
1507: N aisle added.
1643/44: Visited by Dowsing. 1695/6: Building partly taken down preserving only tower and SW end. The inhabitants being unable to support a large church obtained grant for its partial demolition. Sale of lead, beams, brasses and bells raised 293 pounds which was used for the remodelling of the S aisle for th use of 40 persons. Note aisle/s were originally 6 bays long but only 4 of the S aisle are in use.
1930: Excavation in the ruins revealed old tile floors. 14 & 15th century stained glass found. An altarstone was also found in 'in a splendid state'. For more details see (S4).
1974: Ruined remains testify to the size and scale of the original church (S1). Details in (S2)(S3)(S4).

2016: A historic building survey was undertaken of the church ruins. Built during the 15th century, the main body of the once magnificent church was deliberately abandoned at the end of the 17th century, and its roof removed, as a dwindling and impoverished congregation retreated into a much smaller church created from the former building’s south aisle. Standing to almost their full-height in the chancel, the ruined walls now form an intriguing backdrop to the present parish church and provide a reminder of a once prosperous community that was able to build, at its own cost and without outside help, such a church as this. Deterioration through exposure to the weather has caused some of the fabric to become unstable and a risk to anyone wishing to explore this important site. The remains were placed on the Heritage at Risk register by Historic England which facilitated the funding to enable the restoration campaign. The restoration project involved extensive masonry repairs which comprised: the consolidation of the structure; specialist stone-conservation; re-pointing of stone and flint work; rough racking the wall-tops to form water-sheds plus the treatment and removal of vegetation growing in the walls. Full scaffolding provided an opportunity for the recording of the otherwise inaccessible upper reaches of the ruins.

The new, great, church seems to have been completed in stages; first the tower, followed by the south aisle, porch, chancel and finally north aisle. Each phase being completed before embarking on the next and only unified at the end when topped off with the linking parapet and clerestory. The new building was a replacement for an existing church which, by this time, was the only one remaining in the parish and the timetable of sequential building was probably determined by the need to maintain a place for divine service.The dates provided by the building contract and later the churchwardens accounts show the church was completed over the course of about 85 years, of which the first 46 were spent building the tower. The body of the church was completed quite quickly, probably between 1472-and c.1512,
with each element taking no more than about 10 years. There was a variety of dressed limestone used on the church from a pale yellow, soft fine-grain, stone to more durable coarser stones like those from the Barnack quarries and the build included reclaimed architectural pieces collected from the previous churches used as rubble and infill. The churchwardens accounts record salvaged stone brought to the site from the old church in the marsh, as well as stone being re-directed from the church building at Southwold and possibly Kessingland.

There are a series of etched marks on a row of stones below the east window of the 17th century church, they occur only in this one place, they run in a horizontal row and have the appearance of a
runic script. It was suggested by the mason working on the repairs that the marks were joggles (a
scoring on the mating surface of stones) for keying the mortar, but they occur nowhere else even
though the bedding faces of hundreds of re-used stones are visible. The arrangement of the marks
would suggest that they were carved once the stones were in-situ, and therefore post 1696, it is possible that they are superstitious marks protecting the building from witchcraft and V W and M
type markings are used commonly found in domestic buildings of the period (C16-18th). The ones at
Walberswick church however do not conform with previously seen marks- or with known merchant
marks - and so remain a mystery. (S5)