Monument record EYE 045 - Church of St Peter and St Paul

A church is mentioned at Eye in the Domesday book.
Church of St Peter and St Paul. Immediately E of castle bailey. Consists of chancel with clerestory and aisles, clerestoried nave, aisles, W tower. Details in (S1)(S2).
Artificial scarp, up to 2.2m high, around S side of churchyard and depicted as continuing around E side on tithe map of 1839 (R1) suggests earthwork enclosure - possibly separate bailey adjoining E side of castle (see EYE 016)(S3).
Scarfe records this as a probable Domesday Minster (S4).
2009: A programme of works at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Eye involved a significant reduction in the floor level of the north chancel aisle/chapel and the insertion of services in a trench excavated through the churchyard to the north of the church. Removal of the 19th/20th century organ platform and soil (representing the fill of earthcut graves) under the wooden choir room floor revealed six brick-lined graves, all of probable 18th or early 19th century date. As reduction of these structures down to the proposed development formation level would have required significant additional resources, a revised level was imposed which left the grave tops intact. Other features recorded included the footing and wall stub for the east wall of the nave north aisle that would have been dismantled when the north chancel chapel was added and the junction between the chancel chapel footing and that of the north nave wall. Monitoring of the service trench revealed evidence of burial in the churchyard in the form of disarticulate human bone and at least three intact burials along with a wall stub thought to represent an earlier phase of the churchyard wall and another piece of brickwork associated with the stepped entrance to the sacristy (S5).

A total of ten timbers from the tower were dendrochronologically sampled,of which one sample was found to have too few rings to analyse, and one timber did not date.The remaining eight were found to form a group of timbers most likely felled at the same time,probably in the the period AD 1466-c.70 (S6).

Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2009 (S7).