All Saints
West Suffolk
Suffolk
DATES OF MAIN PHASES, NAME OF ARCHITECTS Mid eleventh-century origins, including nave, tower, and western part of chancel, The eastern part of the chancel is not much later, probably dating to the late C11 or early C12.
Architectural Features
The top of the tower was added or rebuilt in the mid C15 , and new windows were also added.
The former rood screen and rood stair may be contemporary.
There appears to have been additional work in the C16, notably the tower door and some windows.
The lower stage is round and dates to the mid to late C11.
It is probably Anglo-Saxon in origin, but it may have been built soon after the Conquest as it has a slight herringbone pattern in some of the masonry.
The upper stage, above the nave roofline, is polygonal and was added in the mid C15.
There are two different Perpendicular windows on the S side E of the porch, one of 3 lights with a depressed head, possibly C16, the other of two-lights with a hood mould and very similar to that on the N. The chancel is long and has shallow projecting sections on either side in the western half.
The E window is Perpendicular of 3 lights, and the SE chancel window is probably C16 and has two lights under a segmental head with a hood mould and head stops.
The timber sides have Flamboyant tracery and pierced bargeboards, and may incorporate some medieval timber.
It covers a C11 doorway, tall with a round head it has a slight continuous chamfer and no capitals.
It may be an alteration of the Norman period when the chancel was extended.
Probably C19 or C20 panelled timber drum pulpit on a short stone stem with a C18 hexagonal tester.
Some fragments of medieval glass including canopies and the letter A, probably largely C15, have been reassembled into a cross in the chancel S window.
Three light nave S window has C19 glass of St Andrew, St Stephen and St Paul as a memorial to John Daye, the C16 printer, installed by the Company of Stationers.
Good monuments including a brass to John Daye a well-known Elizabethan printer of religious works including the Book of Common Prayer and Foxe¿s Book of the Martyrs, with a punning inscription, very complete.
Little Bradley are listed together simply as Bradley in Domesday Book of 1086.
There was a church in Bradley in 1086, and while it is usually assumed to have been that at Great Bradley, it could have been the one at Little Bradley as Little Bradley church is earlier than Great Bradley church.
A will of 1455/6 may give a date for the building or rebuilding of the top of the tower.
SOURCES Cautley, H M, Suffolk Churches , 228 Mortlock, D P, The Popular Guide to Suffolk Churches, I: West Suffolk , 140-41 Pevsner, N, rev. E Radcliffe, The Buildings of England: Suffolk , 335 REASONS FOR DESIGNATION The church of All Saints, Little Bradley, Suffolk is designated at Grade I for the following principal reasons: * An outstanding example of a very complete mid C11 church with some early C12 additions, but few subsequent changes. * Excellent monuments, including one to John Daye, the well known Elizabethan printer.
TL6852 : All Saints, Little Bradley - Wall monument