Church of St. Mary The Virgin, Wortham
The largest church Round Tower in Britain
St Mary’s Wortham in central Suffolk, in the east of England, boasts the largest round tower in the British Isles, 29 feet in diameter and originally perhaps 62 feet high. It’s thought by many authorities to be pre-Norman, and thus one of the oldest standing structures in the country.
St Mary’s is the centre of a rural parish, made famous in the nineteenth century by its parson The Reverend Richard Cobbold, who recorded in words and pictures his entire congregation.
Today St Mary’s stands in urgent need of approximately £200,000 to renew its decaying nave roof. Without this work, the church will not survive.
In addition to the appeal for repair funds, the Friends of Wortham Church propose to commission a heritage and conservation plan to carry medieval St Mary’s through the twenty-first century.
From our 2023-24 Appeal Patron
Martha Kearney
Martha Kearney, journalist and film-maker, presents BBC Radio 4’s Today programme
“St Mary’s Wortham has been my village neighbour for many years. I’ve enjoyed many walks there, especially ones by torchlight over frosty fields to go to the midnight service at Christmas.
Its airy nave is a place of peace and contemplation while outside the massive round tower speaks of a lost history and perhaps a violent one when villagers needed defences against intruders.
In modern times, St Mary’s has been the focus of a vigorous and varied cultural life for its village, despite its remote setting. I have fond memories of narrating Cobbold the Musical there.
Today our church’s future is threatened unless we urgently raise substantial funds to repair its decaying roof. Hence this appeal.
Support for our heritage is vital to our shared future. St Mary’s welcomes your support.”
- Martha Kearney
Why we need your help
Although the roof seems in good repair from the inside, the roofing felt and timber battens are rotting and there is advancing loss of pantiles. Plasterwork in the west end of the church has been temporarily repaired but the danger of developing water ingress is severe. If the roof is not replaced quickly, the organ is at immediate risk, and then the ceiling plasterwork will collapse and the church will be rendered unusable. All its historic fabric will rapidly decay and St Mary’s will become a ruin.
Your donations will save the roof and keep a unique and important church alive for future generations.
Patching repairs to water-damaged ceiling plasterwork above the organ
Community
We hope to build out this site with stories and insights into what this ancient church means to our local community now, and what it has meant to parishioners of the past. Please share your stories with us so we can add them to the blog we intend to start.
St. Mary’s & Pre-History
Many British churches were built on pagan sites. Yards from the Round Tower lies ‘The Magic Stone’, which when stood upright probably marked a pre-Christian worship site. Many of these pagan landmarks were toppled or otherwise effaced in the early Christian period.
There is evidence on the Round Tower itself of a ‘Christianising’ process, emphasising the break with the pagan past
Mysteries of the Round Tower
The tower as both symbol and metaphor occupies a special place in the history and the mythology of the British Isles and Ireland.
Many East Anglian churches boast round, flint-built bell towers. But none matches the scale of St Mary’s.
Was it constructed as a defensive resource when the Viking Great Army was raiding England along the Waveney River estuary? Will archaeological investigation unlock its mysteries?
“Blessed be this place, More blessed still this tower”
— W. B Yeats
