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ST MARY-LE-TOWER CHURCH
HISTORY
THROUGH EIGHT CENTURIES
The first church, endowed with 26
acres and probably built of wood, flourished in the time of Edward the
Confessor as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.
Holy Trinity Priory was founded in about
1177 and for 360 years its black-habited Augustinian secular canons
served the Tower church and parish.
By 29 June 1200, when King John's
Charter was received in the churchyard, the second Romanesque
church shown on the Borough Seal had replaced the former Saxon building.
St Mary le Tower has been the town's civic church ever since.
Turstan, a canon in 1220, is the first
incumbent whose name we know.
In 1325 the Merchant Guild of Corpus Christi was founded. Its
processions, plays and feasts were held on the Thursday after Trinity
Sunday. Miracle play props were stored in the church. Each
Maundy Thursday
the feet of 13 poor men were
washed in the chancel.
The Chaplain of the Guild taught the
sons of members, probably in the south aisle: this was the beginning of
the town grammar school.
By 1450, the Romanesque church needed
rebuilding and William Gowty's will of 1448 left 'calyon stone for all
the new church being built in the churchyard of the same church'. The
north and south nave aisles of this third church were built then.
In 1479, Robert Wimbill, notary public, ordered a memorial brass (under
chancel carpet) with a prayer to the Trinity across his breast:
'My hope lies in my bosom;
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on me.'
1512 Thomas Drayll, mercer, MP, died and was buried under a Norwich-made
bracket brass laid in the north nave aisle chapel to St Katharine which
he had endowed already.
1525 Thomas Baldry, mercer, MP, was
buried with a brass showing his first wife Alys and second wife
Christian. He left £20 to 'the new making of the steeple'.
1537 Holy Trinity Priory dissolved. Thomas Peacock, displaced chaplain
of Edmund Daundy's chantry of
St Thomas of Canterbury in St Lawrence church was the last canon
incumbent.
From that time, the parishioners elected their own ministers and paid
church rates for their support.
1540 Thomas Manser's will ordered that the south aisle be extended to
the east end of the chancel and that his tomb be like that of Edmund
Daundy at St Lawrence, thus dating the south chancel two-bay arcade.
1561 Queen Elizabeth, visited Ipswich
and found the ministers serving the churches much inferior to the canons
of the priories her father dissolved.
The Corporation agreed to appoint one Town
Preacher for sermons at the Tower on Easter Monday,
Ascension Day,
Whitsunday and Michaelmas, to be attended by all Portmen and Councilmen
robed.
1570 The Corporation Seat was built on
the north of the nave so that the members could sit comfortably through
sermons as long as three and a half hours.
1599 William Smarte, MP, died and his
memorial oil-painted on board has the earliest panorama of Ipswich at
the foot, acrostic verses of high quality and portraits of William and
Alice [Scrivener] his wife. He left books and manuscripts, at first kept
in a chest in the vestry for a preacher's library.
1605 Samuel Ward, the most celebrated of all Town Preachers was
appointed. He preached every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and took
charge of such charities as schools and almshouses. His working
library was greatly enlarged. a strict Puritan, he fell foul of Bp
Matthew Wren at Norwich and
Archbp William Laud at
Canterbury. When in 1635 he was banned from preaching for life for
encouraging emigration to New England there were riots on the streets of
Ipswich.
The Corporation refused to replace him and paid his stipend for life,
then supported his widow and eldest son who could not work. His floor
slab of 1640 is now in the choir vestry.
1643 As the Civil War loomed, the church was firmly in Puritan hands.
Churchwarden Jacob Caley arranged that when his friend William Dowsing
arrived to cleanse the church of superstition, the saints in stained
glass had already been replaced by clear windows.
The spire (shown on Smarte's memorial)
was blown down in a hurricane on 18 February 1661. A legacy of 1716
towards rebuilding it was swallowed up in Chancery.
1664 The Corporation Seat was enlarged
and refurbished by the direction of Robert Clarke, Town Clerk.
1700 The present pulpit was built and
carved by Edward Hubbard to sit above the desks for lecturer and sexton
facing the Corporation Seat.
1832 The 16 year-old Samuel Read
painted a view of the interior showing how dark and gloomy the many
galleries had made the building. The organ, originally built by Renatus
Harris in 1680, was at the west end.
The 18th century organist and
composer Joseph Gibbs was buried near the organ stool.
The present fourth church was
almost totally rebuilt in phases beginning with the chancel in 1850-53.
The two-bay south chancel arcade was retained. In the 1860s the nave and
aisles were tackled, again retaining the arcades. The whole campaign was
paid for by George Bacon, banker and philanthropist, and the architect
was Richard Makilwaine Phipson.
Ipswich was from the 17th century a
Puritan stronghold, in early-Victorian times Evangelical, but the vicars
who oversaw the rebuilding of the Tower Church were Tractarians and the
furnishings and ornaments suited the ritual they favoured. A tradition
of choral services and sacramental teaching still exists, but the
churchmanship has never been extreme.
John Blatchly
From The Church of St Mary-le-Tower
Guide 2010
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