Saint Mary at Stoke
Encyclopedia
Saint Mary at Stoke is a Grade I listed Anglican church Over Stoke on the junction of Stoke Street and Belstead Road in Ipswich, Suffolk.
The church stands in a prominent position near the foot of a ridge, just south west of Stoke Bridge and the town centre. Its parish was a small farming community which saw a great increase in population with the coming of the railway to this part of Ipswich. It was once governed by Ely, a fact lightly made much of by a politician of Stoke .
In 1995 its parish was subsumed into the South West Ipswich Team Ministry in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
The building is made up of a small medieval church and a large Victorian extension designed by William Butterfield
William Butterfield
William Butterfield was a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement . He is noted for his use of polychromy-Biography:...
in 1872 . A church has existed on this site since the 10th Century. It is probably one of the St Marys mentioned in the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
.
The original nave (now the north aisle) has a medieval single hammer beam roof, with moulded wall plates, angels with shields at the ends of the hammer beams, and figures underneath. The angels are Victorian replacements for those destroyed by iconoclasts
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
. The church was visited by William Dowsing
William Dowsing
William Dowsing was an English iconoclast who operated at the time of the English Civil War. Dowsing was a puritan soldier who was born in Laxfield, Suffolk...
. There is a medieval piscina.