Cranwich, Norfolk

It took me a while to find St Mary the Virgin, to my astonishment open, but when I did I was delighted - this is a gem of a church and the location is idyllic.

ST MARY. Anglo-Saxon round tower with a small round W window below and (later?) round sound-holes with knot patterns. The S doorway is of c.1200. Round arch with one slight chamfer, hood-mould with dog-tooth. Square-headed Perp N windows. The chancel in forms of c.1300 (windows with intersected and Y-tracery) but perhaps of the time in the early C19 when the interior was redecorated. On the other hand the piscina looks original work of c.1300. - PLATE. Elizabethan Chalice and Paten. - The churchyard of Cranwich is completely circular.

CRANWICH. Only a handful of folk live in this small place of a few cottages, a farm by a pond, and a church with a rectory in a wayside field half a mile from the River Wissey. The rectory has a fine cedar in its garden; the church has a very old story, and stands on a mound which has been hallowed by Christian burial longer than these walls have stood.

The tower, with a tiny bull’s-eye window and some round windows with interlacing tracery, is the most interesting as well as the oldest part of the simple church, for its lower part is said to be Saxon. The rest of it, with grotesque heads under the parapet, is 13th century. The Normans built the low doorway through which we enter, and 15th-century builders gave it the porch for protection. Windows of that time are in the nave, but those of the chancel, which has no arch and is as wide as the nave, are 600 years old. The piscina with a battered arch and a pillar on each side has been here 700 years.

Flickr.