Total Suffolk churches 11th April 2017 – 4th September 2021: 504 + 7 additional historic chapels and churches
St Bartholomew’s, Orford
Concert photos courtesy of Richard Allenby-Pratt, Linden Baxter, Alison Marshall and Sheida Davis; church photos taken by me a few days prior to the event.
The day had finally arrived for my final medieval Suffolk church: no. 504. Including the unofficial extras, the total came to 511, with only one included in error – Higham, in west Suffolk, which is actually a church of Victorian foundation. So the true number of Suffolk medieval churches – of which any part remains above ground – is 503, including active and redundant, public, private, converted and ruined churches. I am fairly confident I didn’t leave out a single one.
As predicted, I was pretty nervous, as I had been for most of the week. Not only about the performance and the boomy church acoustic – which isn’t a problem when you are playing solo Bach suites but can be a lot more problematic for chamber music – but about the whole occasion. I was responsible for nearly all the organising, and there was really no way round the fact I needed to say a few words at the beginning. Speaking at the end might have been easier (or possibly harder, if the adrenaline had run its course), but I wanted music to have the last word.
Returning from my first rehearsal for the Orford concert in London – my first time there in getting on for two years – I had scheduled my remaining two ruins in northwest Suffolk for the drive home from Cambridge train station. I had intended to play outside St Peter’s 
I’d wanted to visit the Catholic church in Lawshall ever since I spotted it in February 2018. It was serendipitous that Pamela, who came to hear me play at 
My friend Rebecca had told me about Row Chapel. It would be an unofficial inclusion in my tour, but, like several others, I felt I could hardly leave it out. I’d originally envisaged going there as a 450th church celebration with a few friends, but Covid and other complications meant I’d abandoned that idea, and didn’t get round to arranging access until the very end of my tour.
On a warm, sunny late August day – which felt entirely strange and wrong after our cold, rainy summer – I arrived at my last of three Sudbury churches (the first two being 
Before my appointment at Shipmeadow, I had a date with the ruins at 
Shipmeadow was different, again, to the other converted churches I’d visited: this one was open plan from end to end, with a raised floor. Apart from one bedroom – down some steps from the chancel in the old vestry – which I spotted when I went to use the loo, I didn’t manage to figure out where the rest must have been – assuming there was more than one bedroom, which I took for granted given the size of the place. This was my favourite conversion, I decided. Of course, it was probably impossible to keep warm in the winter, but open plan has always been my preference, and in this case it retained more of the character of the original building.
St Clement’s was to be my last Ipswich church, and it was galling that despite my improved familiarity with the town centre – largely a positive state of affairs – I didn’t manage to round off my Ipswich church tour with a stress-free driving or parking experience. I’d left plenty of extra time to get there, and still I was a little late. I may like Ipswich far better now than I did, and have improved my navigation skills greatly, but I suppose I will never feel truly comfortable in large towns – and never feel at all comfortable driving in them.
I’d last tried to visit Stratford St Andrew some three or four years previously, not remembering it was no longer a church. Luckily, I wasn’t arrested for attempted break-in. Stuart came out to meet me in the driveway – parked legally this time – and I was surprised when he said he thought he might have seen me before, since he used to live in Bildeston, a neighbouring village to mine. I deduced from our conversation that he was probably still living there at the time of my last visit.
Inexplicably, it had escaped my notice that there was more than one church of medieval foundation in Newmarket. I’d played in