Suffolk’s Medieval Churches with Peter Riddington

We are thrilled to welcome Peter Riddington, Bury Society planning adviser, to give a talk on ‘Suffolk’s Medieval Churches: a History and Exploration’.

The talk aims to encourage everyone to visit churches and, to this end, it is profusely illustrated with as many pictures of churches and their contents that is possible to squeeze into about an hour!  It will look at how churches developed (or, indeed, didn’t develop!) and what one is likely to find while exploring these medieval buildings, which are the repositories of so much of our cultural and communal memory, and shared experience.  We’ll explore why few are of their original size and shape, and why, indeed, some are very different to what they looked like when first built. We’ll look at their different elements and explore their contents and what different elements tell us about their histories.

Peter Riddington is a semi-retired conservation architect and formerly an inspecting Church Architect for several churches in London. He has lived in Bury St Edmunds for 16 years and during this time he has (thanks to his long suffering wife) visited most of the medieval churches in the county and, indeed, he is a Steward at St Mary’s in Bury, explaining the history and architecture of that magnificent church to visitors on a Saturday afternoon.