Woolpit, Suffolk - St Mary: A breathtaking double hammerbeam roof. This is actually a false double hammerbeam structure because the upper tier of hammers is purely decorative, rather than load-bearing (it has no vertical hammerposts to connect it to the rafters). Mortlock suggests that it dates from 1440-50, Birkin Haward places it later, estimating 1455-60, though for slightly self-serving reasons. 66 angels adorn the ends of the hammerbeams (with over 60 more in the aisles). They are mostly (perhaps all) not original, but were restored in 1862 by the master carver Henry Ringham of Ipswich (1806-1866). Ringham worked on many other churches in the area, and did well enough to build himself a rather grand mock-Tudor house (The Gothic House) in Ipswich, before going bust. Ringham's replacement of so many angels here suggests that they had been destroyed by iconoclasts, but probably not by William Dowsing. His associates visited the church on February 29th 1644 and Dowsing made the following entry in his diary: "My Deputy. 80 Superstitious pictures; some he brake down, and the rest he gave order to take down; and three crosses to be taken down in 20 days - 6s. 8d." There is no mention of Woolpit's roof angels, which suggests that they had already gone, probably in the post-Reformation iconoclasm of roughly a hundred years earlier. St Mary's had housed the shrine of Our Lady of Woolpit, a place of pilgrimage, which would have made it an obvious target for the first wave of image destroyers.
Woolpit, Suffolk - St Mary: The full length of the angel roof, which is 19ft 4in wide, with ten bays (the sections between the trusses or ribs) each of which is 6ft 4in long.
Woolpit, Suffolk - St Mary: Close-up of the hammer beams, wall posts and the (replaced) roof angels.
Woolpit, Suffolk - St Mary: Detail showing the two tiers of hammerbeams. The lower tier has vertical hammerposts which connect to the principal rafters and so bear weight. The upper tier consists only of horizontal hammerbeams, and so carries no weight, making it purely decorative. This is why the roof is termed a false double hammerbeam. For an example of a true double hammerbeam roof (one where both tiers are load-bearing), see Gissing in Norfolk, elsewhere on this website.