THE NAVE
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Standing by the font and looking east we see the impressive height and length of the nave and chancel, with their tall arcades and clerestory either side. The guildsman of the late Middle Ages processing in from the west door would have been even more impressed because there would have been no pews to clutter the sweep of the view. His first focus would be on the chancel arch, with a rood screen blazing with colour and gold, and above it a painting partly uncovered in 1865 when the plaster was removed: it has been suggested that it may have represented Christ and the twelve apostles with saints and angels. Pious Elizabethans had replaced the plaster and painted inscriptions of Revelations 1 vv. 7 and 8 - “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” and of II Corinthians 5 v.16 – “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” These texts have in their turn sadly been plastered over.
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His second focus would have been on the altars at the chancel step dedicated to the guilds’ patrons (underlined) – St.Edmund in the chapel off the north aisle, St.John the Baptist in the north aisle, St.James where the lectern now stands, St.Peter in the pulpit’s position, and the Holy Trinity in the south aisle. Had he cared to look up, he would have seen that the first four corbels of the roof on each side nearest the tower are curiously carved, and also, on the south side under the eighth corbel in the clerestory, two carved birds whose significance is unknown.
Today, by the chancel step, is the lectern, a replacement in 2008 for an oaken eagle stolen in 2001: and on the south side the pulpit of oak, Caen stone and Languedoc marble installed in 1865. The appearance of the church today is a product first of the dreadful damage done by “Colonel” William Dowsing’s government-sponsored vandals on 19th January 1643 – “We brake down an 100 Superstitious Pictures (i.e. the stained glass) and took up 7 superstitious Inscriptions on the Grave Stones (i.e. the brasses), Ora pro Nobis.”, and second of the extensive remodelling undertaken in 1865. It is extremely interesting that Miss Frances Torlesse (1839-1935), the Rev.Martin’s youngest child, wrote in her memoirs BYGONE DAYS (1914) “it is indeed much to be regretted that the process of church restoration was not understood at that time, for many precious relics of the pre-Reformation building were destroyed, among them the stairway to the rood loft.” Sketches of the church’s appearance before the 1865 works, including box pews and a Christopher Wren-type reredos, are hanging on the pillar by the south door.
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However, it is worth noting that on 13th July 1686 “it was ordered in a towne meeting that Isaac Jacob and John Wilsher shall scrape off all the decayed places of the playstering within the church, and to playster the same, and to wash and stope all the holles (holes), and to scrape the pillows, and to white the church all over with Spanish white, and to paint it round with a wainscotte cullow (colour) laid in oyles, and the pillows five foot and two inches (160 cm) from the ground, and to black the heads of the pillows, and to paint the funte (i.e. font) with a marball cullow in oyle, Secondly, to playster the north and south side of midell aisle of the church above the leads (i.e. the clerestory), and to repair the pillows of the windows, and to make new pillows where they shall be wanting above, and to finish in the glasse when it is set up above, for eighteen pounds.” There is no record of when this paint was removed, possibly in 1865, but there are still traces of it in, for example, the deep grooves in the font.
Looking west from the chancel arch, to quote the late Norman Scarfe, “Stoke achieved interior perfection, at the way the roof, arcades, tower arch and, indeed, the elevated font, are brilliantly related to each other” John Constable is quoted as saying that “its lofty and slender proportions are the crowning beauty of the whole interior”, and indeed it is difficult to overpraise its exquisite elegance.
