Wednesday 8 August 2018

Wilton, Norfolk

Technically this is, nowadays, Hockwold cum Wilton but let's stick with Wilton. St James, locked, keyholder listed with slightly confusing directions, was locked and it was so hot and the exterior so dull that I decided not to track the key down - this, it transpires, was a mistake, so a revisit is in order. The interior is more interesting than the exterior implies, once again never judge a book etc.

I went back last Friday [07/09/18] and the interior is, indeed, superb.

ST JAMES. Early C14 and Perp. Of the former period the W tower with its recessed stone spire - a rare thing in Norfolk. The spire has two tiers of lucarnes. Tower arch with two continuous chamfers and an inner order on three-eighth responds. The chancel arch of the same style. Dec also the rest of the chancel. Four light E window with reticulated tracery. Similar N and S windows of two lights and priest’s doorway. Odd little blocked low-side windows. Inside large ogee-headed recess for a monument and small ogee-headed piscina. The nave must have been of the same period too, see the first window from the W on the N as well as the S side (Y-tracery). The other windows are Perp. Perp S porch with pretty two-light side windows. Interior with wide nave covered by a single-framed roof. - SCREEN. Much renewed. Big three-light divisions, cut into by the present position on the l. and the r. All heads of the lights are ogee-arched. - BENCHES. A good set with low pierced backs decorated with different patterns of tracery. Poppy-heads and, on the arm-rests, animals, and also a shepherd with his flock, a group of the Visitation, and other groups of two figures. - CHEST. With richly traceried front, probably C15. - (PAINTING. A large area of the N wall with C14 masonry pattern with roses on stalks. Tristram) - STAINED GLASS. In the head of one S window in the chancel some early C14 glass. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1681, remade from plate of 1568. - MONUMENT. Mrs Colborne d 1683. Tablet of black and white stone, quite impressive.

St James (3)

HOCKWOLD-CUM-WILTON. The two places run from one to the other, both with many flint-walled cottages, and each with an old church.

Wilton has a slender cross on the green near the church of St James, which comes from the 14th and 15th centuries. Its old porch keeps its old oak roof, and lovely rafters look down on the cream-walled nave and chancel, full of light. The great chancel arch reaches the roof. There are quaint niches in the splays of two windows, and under one is a trefoiled piscina. The tapering font is old, and there are old glass fragments. The chief charm of the church is in its woodwork, from the roofs down to the oak chest. There is a fine array of richly carved benches, and among their carvings, old and new, are quaint grotesques, a shepherd with sheep, an old woman who seems to be talking to a headless companion, and a man on all fours. There is delicate tracery in the old screen, one side of which has a curious scene of a cross-legged man wearing a crown and two jesters on galloping horses by his side.

Hockwold’s church of St Peter keeps company with Hockwold Hall by the wayside. The house has walls of mellowed brick, gables, and clustered chimneys, and has a story centuries old. The church is 14th and 15th century, with a great array of old windows. The chancel has fine old seats for the priests and in the nave is a patch of ancient wall painting strewn with daisies. Fiddles and flutes, trumpets and cherubs, adorn an 18th-century wall monument to John Hungerford and his wife. The glory of the church is the beautiful nave roof, its carved tie-beams alternating with hammerbeams, from which eight figures of saints look down, their hands upraised and some of them wearing crowns.

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