On a frosty morning in January 1757, Richard Rhoades was baptised at Sutterby church.

That same day his mother was buried there.

Thirteen years later Richard’s father died, leaving two young boys orphaned and homeless...

#thread

The next mention of the brothers, Richard and George, is in 1791, when they had left Lincolnshire and bought a plot of land together in Virginia. They married two sisters, farmed together and died in 1842 within a few months of each other.

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Our founder, Ivor Bulmer Thomas saved hundreds of churches in his lifetime, and Sutterby would be one of his last.

Three days before his death in October 1993 he wrote,

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Sutterby church is one of the buildings the Friends of Friendless Churches was formed to save. There is no danger of Long Melford or Beverley Minster being pulled down, but Sutterby would undoubtedly have been demolished, or would have collapsed, if the Friends had not saved it.

This is not a church about which a coffee-table book will be written.

Indeed, it gets no notice in the national books and scant notice even in the Lincolnshire books.

Forlorn in a field of nettles, the roof was falling in and the porch was collapsing when we adopted it.

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Sutterby may not be deserving of a page in an architectural tome, but it is our humble heritage.

It is *ours*, it is steeped in memory, and it is the only monument to the lives of hundreds of people that history has forgotten.

How could anyone demolish a place like this?

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