Reinterred: Bardwell 3 Mills Walk

Today we had a favourite walk of mine from Bardwell - The 3 Mills Walk.

This was the invite from Joyce.

"Tuesday Mar 10th (New date as closed Mondays) The 3 Mills walk from Bardwell. This 11-mile walk involves some road walking but it's a pretty good route for this time of year. We will visit Sapiston, RAF Honington , Troston Woods + Ixworth Thorpe. We have permission to park park at The Grumpy Goat IP31 1AB and I'll be there for coffee at 10am. Walk to start at 10.30am if you don’t want toilets/coffee. Pls bring a packed lunch as this will be eaten in Troston Woods. "

This was our route, going anti-clockwise.

Here are some of my photos.

Drinks at The Grumpy Goat. beforehand.

Joyce briefing us about the walk in the car park. There were 10 of us today.

A lttle along the road we stopped to look at these...

They are apparently Empress trees.

As we reached Sapiston village we turned off the road onto a footpath.

This was the only significant mud we had all day.

We emerged close to the Old Rectory and took a detour past Grange Farm to Sapiston Church.

Here we found a lovely show of daffodils.

St. Andrew's Church is, unfortunately, no longer left unlocked, so we couldn't go in.

Simon Knott says of the Norman doorway... "Within the south porch is quite the best Norman doorway in Suffolk, elaborate and beautiful. The extent of the convoluted arches is accentuated by the smallness of the doorway. It takes the breath away. There is nothing like a Norman doorway for restoring ones sense of proportion. It has stood there for nearly 800 years, which kind of puts your own troubles into perspective, don't you think? The blocks are set together in pairs, each one reflecting the scoop of its partner. Those in the inner arch are slightly larger than those in the outer arch, and the illusion is of a peacock displaying its tail feathers. A medieval head looks down from above it. At either end is a mass dial, from the days before the 14th century porch was built."

We backtracked to the path opposite the rectory. In an adjacent field we got a glimpse of the black Hebridean Sheep,

This was our first mill - the disused Sapiston watermill.

We were surprised to see a man up a tree here.

We crossed the Black Bourne, which wasn't as full as we had seen it before.

The silver birch trees here reminded us of Anglesey Abbey.

We skirted Ixworth Thorpe (to which we would return later) and passed through RAF Honington. This is the church for the base.

Turning South now we came to Troston Woods where we had our lunch as we had done previously.

We were interested to find a "Seed Swap" in the Troston village phonebox, which was instigated last year.

This time we visited St. Mary, Troston church. As we approached the clock chimed using the bells. I remembered that the last time we were here (see here), we saw they were installing and testing a Carillon Controller for the church bells.

Dawn was amused by the ancient graffiti.

The wall paintings are impressive. As Simon Knott explains in his description linked to above...

"Troston has a fine fine group of wall paintings. Most prominent is the 15th century figure of St George on horseback, dispatching a dragon. He is a fine figure, and you can sense the force with which the lance is pushed home. Roughly contemporary with him is a stately St Christopher, familiar from a hundred other East Anglian churches of course, but here with a gravitas he sometimes lacks elsewhere.

There is another figure, a knight on horseback, who appears to be forcing his lance into a dragon-shaped space, almost certainly another St George. But the most interesting thing about him is that he is older than the two larger paintings, a reminder that wall paintings in churches were successively covered and repainted as artistic fashions and devotional priorities changed and developed. In many places, we find that by the later years of the 15th century they are being covered up, and the walls are being punched through with large windows, to illuminate the new arrangement of pulpit and benches, and the great rood above the chancel arch - this, a full half century before the Protestant Reformation.

The most memorable of the paintings here is perhaps the excerpt from what appears to be a 14th century martyrdom of St Edmund scheme. The saint leans back on a tree, his body already pierced by arrows, his attackers looking on. Troston is on the route between the probable site of that martyrdom in Hellesdon near Norwich and the saint's final resting place at Bury Abbey. These paintings are all on the north wall, but above them all, over the chancel arch, sits a 15th century Christ in Judgement, blood spurting from his wounds."

Joyce and Jane investigated the books on the lectern as Karen took photographs.

Onwards now back tolwards Ixworth Thorpe. Ahead of us we could see Sapiston Church that we had visied earlier.

A short stretch along the main road...

...and then we turned onto Bardwell road to head back towards Bardwell, passing Lynton Cottages and Barn.

We were close to where we had been earlier, walking parallel to the path we had been on and having a good view of Sapiston church.

Our second mill was the picturesque watermill, now called Mill Farm.

Not far to go now and we soon had a view of St. Peter and St. Paul's church.

We crossed the repaired footbridge across the Black Bourne that Dawn and I had found closed when we came this way (see here), and I took the day's group photo at the top of this post before heading on towards the church.

We stopped to visit the interior.

They have a byre as a table for the church literature.

We admired the kneelers...

..and the wall paintings. Simon Knotts says "One fortunate outcome of the 19th Century restoration was the unearthing of a series of late medieval wall paintings, some of which were recorded and then plastered over, but a few can still be seen. Judging by the Deposition of Christ from the Cross and the Three Marys at the Empty Tomb, which must both be part of a Passion sequence, they are of a high quality."