St Mary, Sutterton

   Ss Peter & Paul was not the only church open in the neighbourhood. Nor the only church to have undergone a thorough-going Nineteenth century restoration, only handled by two lesser masters of the Gothic Revival - Edward Browning and James Fowler of Louth - the results, it has to be said, are less interesting.

   St Mary's stands close to the village street - before the building of by-pass this was the thunderous A17 between Newark and King's Lynn, and it must have been hell for residents.  Anyway St Mary's is a large big-boned sort of a church, perhaps a more work-a-day piece of architecture than Algarkirk, but still attractive with a short central tower and splendid crocketed spire.  The nave is the oldest portion - late Norman, though all the windows are later including the very complex Decorated west window.  Pevsner thought it wasn't beautiful, but you don't have to agree with him. The transepts and chancel are Early English, though much rebuilt.  The North transept is my favourite part of the church, spacious and very elegant.  And being cruciform the church has some delicious cross-vistas. The south transept and the chancel were rebuilt by Browning in 1861-3 and the chancel restored in 1879 by James Fowler and it is to him, I think, that we owe the mad tiles around the High Altar (looking very 'Sixties' in my photo).