1570, as a place of protestant worship, for the convenience of the inhabitants.  In 1698 this chapel was re-built, since which time it has undergone various alterations, and has recently been converted into a town hall, in front of which is the town chamber, where parish business is transacted.  The building may be instantly recognised by the clock, which is attached to its front, projecting over the street.

Near the town hall may be seen the fragments of a flintstone building, in which exist the weather mouldings of one or two arches, apparently in the style of Henry VII.  Gillingwater conjectures that it is the remnant of a cell belonging to the priory of St. Bartholomew in London, to which the Impropriation of Lowestoft belonged; other appearances in the immediate neighbourhood, and especially the discovery of the arms of the priory, on a piece of timber dug up there a few years ago, seem to favour the conjecture.

Having now spoken of the ecclesiastical buildings, which either no longer exist, or have been appropriated to common purposes, we turn to the parish church and matters connected particularly with it.

The benefice of Lowestoft is a vicarage, endowed with the great tithes, through the exertions of the Rev. John Tanner, a former vicar, who, with great trouble and perseverance, collected money for the purchase of the Impropriation, which purchase he effected in 1721.

THE CHURCH.

The church ‘standing by the roadside in its own little garden of Gethsemane,’ is a fine old building dedicated to St. Margaret, situated about half a mile westward of the town, towards which all the streets on the west side tend, as to a common centre.  The present building is supposed to have been founded about the middle of the fourteenth century, (on the site of a more ancient fabric, to which the tower, from its inferior proportions and mean construction, is concluded to have belonged,) though much of the tracery which enriches its windows, is supposed to be referable to a later era.

The church is with good reason supposed to have been built by the funds supplied from the treasury of the priory of St. Bartholomew, to which establishment the impropriation of the town belonged.  The dimensions of the church are as follows:—Its length, 182 feet; width, 62 feet; height, 43 feet.  It comprises a nave, chancel, two aisles, north and south porches, and a square tower, surmounted by a tapering spire of timber, covered with lead, the extreme height of which is 120 feet.  On the roof of the south porch are to be seen the popish emblems of the Holy Trinity, and of our Lord’s passion; and over the porch is a room called the “maids chamber,” formerly inhabited by two maiden sisters who lived a recluse life, and who left money for the sinking of two wells, situated between the church and the infirmary, called the Basket Wells; Basket being a corruption of Bess and Kate, the names of the donors.  Under the chancel floor is a well wrought crypt of stone, entered by a winding staircase from the interior of the north wall; and at the west end of the nave is a long narrow arch, supposed to have been originally used as a penitent’s porch, agreeably to the custom of the ancient church.

The great east window is filled with stained glass, painted, and presented by Mr. Robert Allen, a bookseller of Lowestoft, whose first attempt at staining may be seen over his shop, in the High street, now occupied by Mr. Thos. Crowe.

A large brass eagle, formerly used as a lecturn, stands with outspread wings in the chancel, supporting an old Black letter Bible.

The Font is very elegant, but has been much defaced.  The rich series of figures with which it was, and still is, partially adorned, were mutilated by one Francis Jessope, who, with a commission from the Earl of Manchester to take away from gravestones all inscriptions on which he found “orate pro anima” (pray for the soul), tore up most of the ancient brasses which were in the church, and visited the images of the saints with his peculiar displeasure.

One inscription escaped his search.

Orate p.aia dne Margarete Parker qe obitt po
die marciz ao dni mo bco bizo cui aie ppiciet de.

It has frequently been our lot to hear the most opprobrious epithets applied to the Iconoclasts of the times of Reformation; but, however much we may regret the indiscriminate manner in which they performed their mission, we must remember, that “their backs were yet sore with the burdens which had been laid upon them; their indignation fierce at the impostures and rapine which they had actually witnessed: theirs would have been a lukewarm zeal indeed, had it not urged them to abolish even the innocent memorials of that wickedness, which had been wrought in their eyesight, on every hill and under every tree.  Another period succeeds, in which the vices of a system are no longer distinctly remembered, and contemplated only through the softening medium of antiquity, and the services of the Iconoclast and the motives on which he acted are all forgotten; and he is regarded with mere horror as an incarnate spirit of destruction.”  [48]

In the chancel lies buried Thomas Scroope, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, and vicar of this parish.  His effigy in brass, habited in his episcopal robes, with a crosier in one hand, and his pastoral staff in the other, was formerly to be seen on a large stone, surrounded by a circumscription, and ornamented with divers heraldic devices, but all have long since disappeared.

He was first a monk of the order of St. Benedict; passed to the profession of a Dominican; then became a Carmelite, and preached the gospel in hair and sackcloth round the country; then became an Anchorite and so continued twenty years; was made Bishop of Dromore by the Pope; then quitted his bishoprick; came into these eastern counties, and went abroad in the neighbourhood barefoot, preaching, teaching, and dispensing alms; and died in Lowestoft, January 15th, 1491, at the age of a hundred years.

In the church there are many Monuments, the inscriptions of which will interest and amuse the reader; some are simple narrative, others are written in the inflated style peculiar to the age in which they were composed; most of them tell their own tales, it is not necessary, therefore, to transfer them to our pages.  One, however, very short, begs to be noticed; it is found in the middle aisle; a small brass simply bears the initials,

On the stone which bears this brass, there was formerly the effigy of a person standing in a praying position, with an inscription underneath, but these brasses are all stripped from their matrices.  This is most probably the index to the grave of Robert Inglesse or Ingloss, Esq., who died in 1365, and was buried in this