Well, it's still locked, although there is a keyholder. But the last decade has brought upon St Mary a change so dramatic that I do not think it can have been repeated anywhere else in the county. Access to the church used to be along a half mile or so of narrow track from the Waldingfield road. My wife remembers blackberrying here as a child some twenty-odd summers ago. Now, St Mary sits beside a stark service road into the Chilton Industrial Estate, one of Suffolk's biggest.
Heavy lorries trundle past on their way to the pet food factory and tyre distribution plant.
Ironically, the church has been redundant for most of those summers, and is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Now, the only visitors, apart from the likes of me of course, come to tend the few graves, many of which are to former residents of Chilton Hall, away across the fields. While I was there, a young couple brought their baby to visit the Hall graves, and so there is obviously continuity there. Beside it, a woman weeps on the urn of Thomas Creaton, a former servant at the Hall. St Mary's 16th century tower, beside the slightly earlier nave.