Rumburgh / Romburch

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Results: 5 records

Click to view images and/or subjects

view of church exterior - southwest view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 25 March 2010 by Keith Evans [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1778638] [accessed 31 December 2019]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of church interior - looking east

Image Source: digital photograph taken 28 December 2017 by Helen Steed [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5638696] [accessed 31 December 2019]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of church interior - looking west

Scene Description: Source caption: "The screen of St Michael and St Felix Church, Rumburgh. When approaching from the west and passing remains of a moat and seeing the dominating west tower, it is realised that this is not a normal church. Indeed the church was not built as a parish church but as the church of a small Benedictine Priory. Aethelmaer,Bishop of Elmham, and Thurstan, Abbot of St Benet at Holme, jointly founded the priory between 1047 and 1064. It was a cell of Holme Abbey in Norfolk. Brother Blakere was the first prior. In 1070 the Bishop fell out of favour. The property was transferred to Count Alan the Red of Brittany who was a follower of William the Conqueror. On Alan's death, his brother gave Rumburgh Priory to the Abbey of St Mary in York. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded that 12 monks lived at the Priory. It was suppressed in 1528 and Cardinal Wolsey was granted the Priory's property and incomes. The plan of the church is Saxon with the broad west tower instead of a Saxon porch (according to Pevsner), and a nave and chancel of the same width. There are no aisles and no chapels. The west tower does dominate - it is wider than it is deep. It dates in its present form from the mid-13th century."

Image Source: digital photograph taken 26 August 2017 by Marathon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5518754] [accessed 31 December 2019]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of font and cover

Scene Description: the old cover on the altered or modern font

Image Source: digital photograph by Simon Knott [http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/rumburgh.htm] [accessed 2 June 2009]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of font and cover - east side

Scene Description: the old cover on the altered or modern font

Image Source: digital photograph taken 23 May 2009 by David [www.flickr.com/photos/brokentaco/4984050759/] [accessed 31 December 2019]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

INFORMATION

FontID: 14775RUM

Church/Chapel: Parish Church of St. Michael and St. Felix [originally a priory church dedicated to St Michael]

Church Patron Saints: St. Michael & St. Felix

Church Location: Rumburgh, Halesworth IP19 0NU, UK

Country Name: England

Location: Suffolk, East Anglia

Directions to Site: Located SE of the A143, 6-7 km NW of Halesworth

Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich

Historical Region: Hundred of Blything

Font Location in Church: [cf. FontNotes]

Century and Period: 13th century [altered], Early English [altered]

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Simon Knott, of Suffolk Churches, for his photograph of the modern font and old cover

Church Notes: mid-11thC Benedictine priory church

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

No individual entry found for Rumburgh in the Domesday survey. The entry for the Priory of Rumburgh in the Victoria County History (Suffolk, vol. 2, 1975) notes: "The priory of Rumburgh was founded between 1064 and 1070 [...] On 11 September, 1525, Dr. Stephen Gardiner, at the commission of Cardinal Wolsey, and under his seal, arrived at Rumburgh, and there in the convent declared to the prior and monks, with the authority of the pope and the king, the suppression of the house". The priory church became parochial thereafter. The entry for this church in Historic England [Listing NGR: TM3464881871] notes: "Parish church, originally built as the church of a Benedictine Priory, founded c.1065 [...] Font, on a low octagonal base, with panelled shaft, replaced bowl and simple Jacobean cover with spike finial." Cautley (1982) notes a simple font cover of the 17th century. The cover is illustrated in Knott (2008), octagonal and box-like, with mouldings on the sides and an obelisk-shaped finial. The font itself, octagonal and decorated with quatrefoil panels on the basin and tracery on the stem; it appears modern, probably 19th-century. [NB: we have no information on the original font of the 13th-century monastic church]

COORDINATES

Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal: 52.3846, 1.4466

Church Latitude & Longitude DMS: 52° 23′ 4.56″ N, 1° 26′ 47.76″ E

UTM: 31U 394278 5804951

LID INFORMATION

Date: 17th-century?

Material: wood, oak?

Apparatus: no

Notes: [cf. FontNotes]

REFERENCES

Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2019-12-31 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.

Cautley, Henry Munro, Suffolk churches and their treasures, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1982

Knott, Simon, The Suffolk Churches Site, Simon Knott, 1999-. [standing permission to reproduce images received from Simon [February 2005]. Accessed: 2009-06-02 00:00:00. URL: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk.