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Churches of the Fen Edge

• 1 July 2026 10.30am - 4.00pm
• Exclusive to EAAF Members - if you're not a member and would like to attend this event Join Now.

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We are delighted that architectural historian and artist, John Maddison and renowned medievalist, Professor Sandy Heslop will lead our day looking at some of the great churches of the Fen Edge. These remarkable buildings in the north-west corner of Suffolk were all served in the Middle Ages by navigable waterways linking them to the Great Ouse in Cambridgeshire. The churches we will visit are Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Isleham and Burwell.

We will begin our day at St Mary the Virgin, Lakenheath, which is archaeologically fascinating with impressive work of different periods and layers of remarkable medieval wall paintings. Onwards to St Mary's Church, Mildenhall, which has a great early fourteenth-century chancel with one of the most impressive tracery windows of the Decorated style. The later medieval architecture is on a very big scale with very important and ornate roofs with exquisite sculpted figures. We will lunch across the road at the Riverside Hotel (with ample parking).

Rested and refreshed, we will drive on to St Andrews, Isleham, which is a lovely parish church with a fourteenth-century nave extended upwards in the early sixteenth century with work of outstanding quality. The latter is plausibly by John Wastell who completed King’s College Chapel for Henry VII. The church has important brasses and spectacular seventeenth-century monuments to the Peyton family. Also in Isleham is the twelfth-century church of a French alien priory cared for by English Heritage. Having served as a barn in later life it has apsidal end and many Romanesque features.

Our final destination is St Mary's, Burwell - one of the most spectacular churches of its period. The lofty nave (1454-64) is believed to be the work of Reginald Ely who designed the side chapels of King’s College chapel that precede the work of John Wastell. The quarries at Burwell provided the soft chalk called clunch that was used for ornate carving in local churches and cathedrals from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century (such as the Lady Chapel wall arcade sculpture of Ely Cathedral and the Easter sepulchre at Northwold).

Tickets are £48 per person and include tours and a buffet lunch. We will need to travel by car, but are on hand to arrange sharing if you need a lift or can offer one.

10.30am	Meet at Lakenheath Church (tea and coffee on arrival)
11.30am	Drive to Mildenhall Church
12.45pm	Lunch at Riverside Hotel, Mildenhall
2.00pm	Drive to Isleham Church
3.00pm	Drive to Burwell Church
4.30pm	Event Close

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