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St Mary, Akenham, Ipswich

The war memorial at Akenham contains just three names, all with the same surname:

Amos Purkiss, son of William Purkiss, of Akenham, Ipswich; husband of Mary Purkiss, of 265 Spring Road, Ipswich. Trimmer Cook, Royal Naval Reserve. Died 25th November, 1916, aboard HM Trawler Burnley. He was 36 years old. His body was never recovered. Remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial, Kent.

George James Purkiss, 2nd Batallion, Norfolk Regiment. Died 1st December, 1915. Family and age unrecorded. His body was never recovered. Remembered on the Basra War Memorial, Iraq.

Philip Edgar Purkiss (recorded by CWGC as Arthur Edgar Purkiss), son of Robert William and Ada Purkiss, of Akenham, Ipswich. Lance Corporal, Machine Gun Corps (Infantry) Died 24th September, 1917. during Third Battle of Ypres. His body was never recovered. Remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium.

East Anglia has more remote churches than Akenham, but can any be so lonely? Here we are, just four miles from the Cornhill in the centre of Ipswich, with the blocks of flats on Whitton within sight, but almost a mile from the nearest proper road and with just two old farmhouses for company.

Standing here on a narrow, muddy track through the fields, I find myself easily transported back through more than a century. I must turn my back on Whitton, one of Suffolk's biggest and most deprived housing estates. Barely a mile from where I now stand, I have seen children play in the wrecks of burned-out vehicles; any weekend, police helicopters light up the night as they track the course of joyriding car thieves. I turn my back on the houses and the distant traffic of the A14, on the little spire of Whitton's pretty parish church. And all I hear is the skylark invisible above me, the gentle rush of the wind in the hedgerow, the sound of a dog from nearby Rise Hall.

In front of me stands St Mary, Akenham. Along with Rise Hall, this little lost church was the scene of one of the great ecclesiatical scandals of the 19th century, a scandal that occupied the national press for a year or more; a scandal that reached the highest courts in the land, and ultimately led to a change in the law. It is the story of a conspiracy, a tale of manipulation and persecution. Even more than this, it was a watershed in the controversy surrounding the Oxford Movement, and the irresistible rise of Anglo-catholicism.

To find out what happened here, let us go back a little further, to the 1860s. The vicar with charge of this parish was the rector of Claydon, Father George Drury, one of the new breed of ultra-ritualists. His introduction of candles and a cross on to the altar at Claydon, as well as vestments, daily communion and even incense, scandalised the local protestants, and led to his admonishment by the Bishop of Norwich. For all these things were quite illegal, of course; several priests had been prosecuted, and a few of them imprisoned, one for more than a year. Others were persecuted into breakdown, early death and even suicide.

Drury's greatest crime, in the eyes of his opponents, was the establishment at Claydon of religious communities, firstly of men, and then a convent of sisters. We may well imagine the effect on a Suffolk village of Father Ignatius, the exotic monk who led the first community here, moving it to Norwich and then to Wales, where it still survives as a Catholic community on the island of Caldy.

What enraged popular opinion, though, was the convent. Father Drury was accused of keeping a harem, an outrageously offensive slur in the mid-19th century. On one occasion, a local mob broke into the convent and 'rescued' a nun; she was conveyed to a lunatic asylum by order of her father, and incarcerated there until his death. Anti-catholic slogans were painted on Drury's rectory, and he built a nine foot wall around it to protect it.

But Claydon is a big village, and we may presume that he found as many enthusiasts as enemies there. Supplemented by adherents from a wide area, his Anglo-catholic services at Claydon were very popular, despite constant interference from the Bishop of Norwich, who on one occasion threatened him with suspension for saying services in an unlicensed preaching house - that is to say, he celebrated communion in the convent. He was also accused of calling communion 'Mass'.
This all seems very amusing today, but we need to remember that burning passions were inflamed; popular opinion, and at times the Law, were not on the side of George Drury.

If Claydon was a busy church, then Akenham was quite the opposite. As I say, Claydon was, and is, a large village; now combined with Barham, it is virtually a small town.

But Akenham, in the 19th century, could muster barely 70 souls (and a fraction that number today). More than this, virtually all the inhabitants were non-conformists, largely because the two major landowners, Mr Gooding of Akenham Hall and Mr Smith of Rise H

St Mary, Akenham, Suffolk

East Anglia has more remote churches than Akenham, but can any be so lonely? Here we are, just four miles from the Cornhill in the centre of Ipswich, with the blocks of flats on Whitton within sight, but almost a mile from the nearest proper road and with just two old farmhouses for company.

Standing here on a narrow, muddy track through the fields, I find myself easily transported back through more than a century. I must turn my back on Whitton, one of Suffolk's biggest and most deprived housing estates. Barely a mile from where I now stand, I have seen children play in the wrecks of burned-out vehicles; any weekend, police helicopters light up the night as they track the course of joyriding car thieves. I turn my back on the houses and the distant traffic of the A14, on the little spire of Whitton's pretty parish church. And all I hear is the skylark invisible above me, the gentle rush of the wind in the hedgerow, the sound of a dog from nearby Rise Hall.

In front of me stands St Mary, Akenham. Along with Rise Hall, this little lost church was the scene of one of the great ecclesiatical scandals of the 19th century, a scandal that occupied the national press for a year or more; a scandal that reached the highest courts in the land, and ultimately led to a change in the law. It is the story of a conspiracy, a tale of manipulation and persecution. Even more than this, it was a watershed in the controversy surrounding the Oxford Movement, and the irresistible rise of Anglo-catholicism.

To find out what happened here, let us go back a little further, to the 1860s. The vicar with charge of this parish was the rector of Claydon, Father George Drury, one of the new breed of ultra-ritualists. His introduction of candles and a cross on to the altar at Claydon, as well as vestments, daily communion and even incense, scandalised the local protestants, and led to his admonishment by the Bishop of Norwich. For all these things were quite illegal, of course; several priests had been prosecuted, and a few of them imprisoned, one for more than a year. Others were persecuted into breakdown, early death and even suicide.

Drury's greatest crime, in the eyes of his opponents, was the establishment at Claydon of religious communities, firstly of men, and then a convent of sisters. We may well imagine the effect on a Suffolk village of Father Ignatius, the exotic monk who led the first community here, moving it to Norwich and then to Wales, where it still survives as a Catholic community on the island of Caldy.

What enraged popular opinion, though, was the convent. Father Drury was accused of keeping a harem, an outrageously offensive slur in the mid-19th century. On one occasion, a local mob broke into the convent and 'rescued' a nun; she was conveyed to a lunatic asylum by order of her father, and incarcerated there until his death. Anti-catholic slogans were painted on Drury's rectory, and he built a nine foot wall around it to protect it.

But Claydon is a big village, and we may presume that he found as many enthusiasts as enemies there. Supplemented by adherents from a wide area, his Anglo-catholic services at Claydon were very popular, despite constant interference from the Bishop of Norwich, who on one occasion threatened him with suspension for saying services in an unlicensed preaching house - that is to say, he celebrated communion in the convent. He was also accused of calling communion 'Mass'.
This all seems very amusing today, but we need to remember that burning passions were inflamed; popular opinion, and at times the Law, were not on the side of George Drury.

If Claydon was a busy church, then Akenham was quite the opposite. As I say, Claydon was, and is, a large village; now combined with Barham, it is virtually a small town.

But Akenham, in the 19th century, could muster barely 70 souls (and a fraction that number today). More than this, virtually all the inhabitants were non-conformists, largely because the two major landowners, Mr Gooding of Akenham Hall and Mr Smith of Rise Hall, beside the church, were both members of Tacket Street Congregational Church in Ipswich. Each Sunday, they would load up their carts, and take their employees off to chapel. Akenham sexton Henry Waterman could rightly claim in 1878 that he was the only Anglican churchman left in the village.

Then, as now, it was left to the people of the parish to elect a churchwarden; unsurprisingly, it was usually a local landowner, and the people here elected Mr Smith of Rise Hall, despite the fact that he wasn't an Anglican. Equally unsurprisingly, Father Drury refused to recognise the appointment (although it was recognised by the Bishop of Norwich) and also refused to allow Smith to hold the keys to Akenham church.

Every Sunday, Father Drury set off across the fields to hold a service at Akenham church. It is still possible to walk this journey between the two churches along a bridleway - it is le