Monument record CHF 009 - Church of St Peter

A church plus 5 acres free land is recorded at Chillesford in the Domesday Survey of 1086.
Church of St Peter. Consists of chancel, nave, S porch, W tower. Tower constructed entirely of corraline crag. Probably church of very early foundation in which original narrow C11 chancel arch has been replaced by the present arch and the pierced openings on either side. Typical C13 font bowl with shallowly recessed arcading on a C16 shaft and the arms of Victoria in plaster. Nave and chancel flint. Main structure C14/C15. Restored 1949 (S1) (S2)(S3).

Excavations to renew the storm drains and soakaways in the churchyard cut into the upper backfills of numerous unmarked graves, although across most of the site the depth was too shallow to disturb articulated human remains.
Intensive sand (?and/or crag) extraction in antiquity (possibly commencing pre-1700) created 2 vast quarry pits bordering the N and S edges of the churchyard. That to the N lies within 10m of the church and the proximity of a working pit seems to have precipitated the demise of the NE part of the churchyard as a burial site; the nave’s N door was bricked up during the 16th or 17th centuries and there are no grave markers on this side of the church. This apparent decline in use was reflected in the low density of graves recorded in the trench in this area and burials that did occur were shallow (individuals lying within 0.5m of the current surface) and uncoffined. This suggests that they were relatively early, but had avoided being disturbed by subsequent deep grave digging more typical of the Victorian and later periods; the results seemed to suggest that this part of the graveyard had been used infrequently in the past, and not at all for quite some time. By contrast, the graveyard S of the church showed a greater occurrence of intercutting and deeper burials and is still in use today.
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2021 (S4)