Caston, Norfolk

Not a first, but unusual, Holy Cross, no idea but I think normally open, was under scaffolding with thatchers and other workers busy at work. A sign on the west door read "church closed for major repairs for whole of 2018" and this is a first, so some serious restoration work has been going on here. I'm unlikely to pass this way again so here's a link to Simon Knott's entry.

HOLY CROSS. Chancel of c.1300. The E window has intersected tracery, but a cinquefoiled circle at the top. Dec W tower, the doorway with a bold ogee head, the window above it with a small reticulation motif inside each unit of reticulated tracery (cf. Thompson nearby). Perp nave windows (but one blocked earlier N window) and modest Perp N porch of two storeys. Nave roof panelled, with bosses. - PULPIT. Jacobean, simple. - SCREEN. Only the base is preserved. - STALLS. Two with MISERICORDS; heads. - Some few BENCH ENDS with poppy-heads. - CHANDELIER. Large, of two tiers; from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.*- STAINED GLASS. In a nave window many ancient fragments newly arranged. - In the chancel much of the time of the restoration (1853). - PLATE. Silver-gilt Paten of c.1520, with the head of Christ in a circle set in a lobed depression. - Chalice (London) 1795.

 

CASTON. It straggles along the highway, a fine old windmill greeting us as we come from Watton. The 14th-century tower of the church stands guard by the green, round which are gathered the school, the smithy, and an old farmhouse with remains of arcading in its walls. It was once a refectory for pilgrims on their way to the shrine at Walsingham, and the pilgrims would see the old cross, of which the great base is still on the green.

The tower is the best feature of this church which Sir John de Caston restored in the second half of the 14th century. The porch with its upper room and the windows of the nave come from the next century. The font is of Sir John’s day, as is the arched recess in the nave, which may have been built for his remains. The pulpit has Jacobean panels, and the base of the old screen is still here. Two old stalls have misereres carved with men’s heads. The roofs have panels painted with barber’s pole pattern and enriched with gilded bosses.

Among fragments of old glass is a medley arranged in formal design, three restored figures of Our Lord, and a wheel of St Catherine. A treasured possession is a fine candelabra for 18 lights, originally given by Charles Stuart to Cheshunt church in Herts. The most interesting relics here are some old poppyhead bench-ends, carved with tracery and quaint animals and birds.

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Rockland St Peter, Norfolk

If it wasn't for the Norman round tower [topped with a later octagonal top], thatched nave roof and rood screen - originally from Tottington, an abandoned battle zone village - in the nave because it is too large for normal positioning, St Peter, open *, should, on paper, be very dull. There's little else of interest here but it's extraordinarily atmospheric and if I hadn't started the day with Attleborough this would undoubtedly be the visit of the day,

* I found it locked but as I was about to leave a keyholder, or perhaps the keyholder, arrived to clean and prepare for the primary school's harvest festival later that day. Apparently they had had a rehearsal in the morning and had locked it when they left, which seems entirely reasonable assuming the teacher[s] had missed the sign stating that the building is kept open dawn to dusk [or some such].

ST PETER. Norman round tower with polygonal top. The tower staircase has an entry with a shouldered lintel and a little quatrefoil window into the nave. Nave and chancel; the nave thatched, with shallow transeptal N and S projections, only 3 ft 3 in. deep. Short chancel rebuilt in 1909. The N porch has a Dec entrance. The brick repairs to the porch are dated 1624. Most of the windows of the church are Perp. - FONT. Octagonal, Dec. Quatrefoils on the stern, tracery on the bowl. - SCREENS. Tall rood screen of ogee-headed one-light divisions. Perp tracery over. Also the parapet of the rood loft. This screen comes from Tottington. - Part of the screen of Rockland is under the tower. This also has one-light ogee-headed divisions. - PULPIT. Jacobean. Also from Tottington. - BENCHES. With traceried ends, poppy-heads, and animals on the arm-rests. From Tottington too. - PLATE. Elizabethan Chalice with bowl inscribed 1701; Paten inscribed 1703.

ROCKLAND ST PETER. Neighbour of Rockland All Saints, it has a pretty group of farm and red-roofed barns and a small church with a round tower and a thatched roof. The Normans raised the tower, and the 15th-century builders gave it the octagonal top. Most of the windows are of their time, but some are a century earlier. The brick and flint porch, with a stone tablet in the gable and the date 1624, has a stout medieval arch, and across the lancet arch of the tower is part of a 15th-century screen. The chancel, once in ruins, has been made new. The best thing inside is the big medieval font, with varied tracery adorning its bowl.

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Great Ellingham, Norfolk

St James, open, felt, in a nice way, slightly down at heels. Whilst there are bits of interest - the C15th niche, dado remains of screens, a poorly preserved  wallpainting and a pleasing west gallery [I missed the brass] - the whole feels rather shabby and in need of some tlc. There are also several severely kitsch statues.

ST JAMES. Essentially an early C14 church. W tower with characteristic doorway and bell-openings. Battlements with chequer flushwork. Recessed lead spire. Nave and chancel in one, also with much chequer flushwork. Dec aisle windows and doorways. The S doorway is shafted inside; in front of the N doorway a porch, again with chequer brickwork. The chancel has tall three-light windows to the S, two-light windows to the N, and a five-light E window with details just going Dec. Here the wall is again chequered. An odd feature is the W window of the clerestory, which is cut in half by the tower. Yet the clerestory can hardly be earlier than the tower. It may be either a calculated oddity or a miscalculation. The clerestory windows are above the spandrels of the arcade arches, not the apexes. The arcades are Dec too, earlier on the S than the N side. On the S quatrefoil with very deep continuous hollows in the diagonals and double-chamfered arches, more C13 than C14, on the N side with four shafts and four separate hollows and arch mouldings with sunk shallow hollows. In the S aisle a large and wide niche with a little vault inside. Remains of painting survive, including little angels. In the chancel the sedilia have been destroyed, apart from the two end shafts. Nave roof with tie-beams on arched braces and tracery above the braces. - FONT. Octagonal, with shields in barbed quatrefoils. - SCREENS. Bases only of rood screen and S parclose screen. The base of the rood screen has fields traceried all over. A fragment of the N parclose screen has the tracery only painted on. - WEST GALLERY. C18, quite a nice composition. - WALL PAINTINGS. In the S aisle scene with a pilgrim by a cross. Also an angel in the jamb of a S window. - PLATE. Pre-Reformation Paten, altered and inscribed 1572; Chalice (Norwich) 1567-8. - MONUMENTS. Brass to a Lady, c.1500, 27 in. figure (N of the altar). - Fysher Colman d. 1758. By T. Stafford of Norwich. Tablet with Rococo cartouche against an obelisk.

GREAT ELLINGHAM. Houses with roofs of thatch and tile are dotted in the lanes and on the highway, where stands the old windmill that has lost its sails. The church, which saw the passing years of the 14th century, has a tower with chequered battlements and a short leaded spire, and is notable inside for its space and light. The windows have leaf tracery, and there are old glass fragments in the chancel, which is ablaze with great windows, the east one of five lights. St James, the patron saint, wearing a tunic and blue cloak and with his staff, stands out in an aisle, below him a tiny ship blown along by cherubs, and these words from the Epistle of St. James:

Behold also the ship which yet they be so large yet they are turned about with a very small helm; even so the tongue is a little member which boasteth great things.

Arches on clustered columns divide the nave and aisles, and stone heads support the restored old roof. The old font is adorned with shields, there is a piscina at the end of the window-seat sedilia, the altar table is Jacobean, and the battered old screen has still some of its traceried panels. Among the medieval relics that came to light in 20th-century restoration is a painted niche in the wall, the rood stairway, two consecration crosses, and a rough patch showing a pilgrim in turban-like cap with his staff, passing a preaching cross. In front of him is what is left of an animal in harness.

The church treasures the fine brass portrait of a lady unknown, her kennel headdress falling over her shoulders, and a long girdle trailing below her dress.

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Attleborough, Norfolk

St Mary, open, is magnificent and was undoubtedly the star of the day. Wallpaintings, benchends, misericords, a Jacobean pulpit and, above all, what must be one of the finest rood screens in the country.

ST MARY. A very stately church in the middle of an uncommonly featureless little town, and it would be statelier yet if it had not lost its Norman chancel and apse, The central tower, however, remains, and this is Norman, at least in its lower parts. The W, N, S, and E arches are all there, amply and strongly shafted, though part of the shafting of the E arch is now outside the church. The capitals have below a scallop wide fleshy stylized leaves similar in character to waterleaf. Of windows, two to the W are shafted and look into the tall early C14 nave. To the E the row of Norman windows is not original. The upper part of the tower is E.E., with wide two-light bell-openings with a quatrefoiled circle in plate tracery. The rest of the church is almost uniformly Dec, of the C14.* The leit-motiv is the so-called four-petalled flower. This occurs everywhere in original and re-done windows and culminates in the proud W window of five lights. There are a N and a larger S transept, all of the same style, though the S transept was founded by William Mortimer, who died in 1297, and the N transept by Thomas Chaunticlere, who died in 1378. Only the N porch and perhaps the clerestory are later. The porch was built by Sir John Ratcliffe, who died in 1441. It is two-storeyed and faced with knapped flint. The entrance has fleurons up one order of jambs and arch, and also shafts with little heads as capitals. A tierceron-star-vault inside. Two-light window above with niches l., r., and over. Inside, the arcades have thin shafts with polygonal capitals to the arch openings and big wave-chamfered projections to nave and aisles. The arches have sunk mouldings. In the aisle walls all the way along wall-arches framing the windows. There were originally S and N chancel chapels, but they have disappeared. The Perp S transept E window must be re-set. It is supposed to come from the College which was founded c.1368 and attached to the church.

FURNISHINGS. The ROOD SCREEN of Attleborough is prodigious. It runs through nave and aisles and has its ribbed W coving complete, part of its E coving, and the loft parapet. The doorway has a depressed cusped ogee arch. The other bays have single lights with no tracery, only very fine cusping and subcusping at the tops. But in a number of bays the whole opening is blocked by a panel with a large painted figure. In front of these bays stood lay altars. Their height can be deduced from the height of the lower, blank parts of the painted panels. In t.he architectural parts also there is plenty of the old colour preserved. All this is of the late C15. - PULPIT. Early C18 and very good. The stair-rail has twisted balusters and carved tread-ends. - STALLS. There are two stalls, in the S aisle, with MISERICORDS with carved heads. - LECTERN. Of 1816. An eagle lectern of the traditional type, but of cast iron and not of brass, and with very untraditional steps. They have handrails l. and r., also of cast iron, and these rest on snakes and have palm branches at the top. - DOOR. To the porch staircase, traceried. - PAINTINGS. Above the low W arch of the crossing tower a large area of painting, not too badly preserved. In the centre a large cross. In the upper row of figures Moses on the r., David on the l., and angels at the ends holding instruments of Christ’s Passion. In the lower row of figures two seraphim and two female figures. Further away from the centre were niches with small figures. Also a St Christopher on the S wall.- STAINED GLASS. Original bits in the W window. - PLATE. Chalice (Norwich) 1567-8; Chalice (Norwich) 1627; Chalice and Cover (London) 1654; Credence Paten (London) 1727.

* Except that some undecorated stone: below the pavement close to the screen are supported to be remnants of the Anglo-Saxon  predecessor of the Norman church. Heraldry indicates a date of oompletion between c.1378 and 1405, which is remarkably late for so wholly Dec a building.

ATTLEBOROUGH. Pleasant with a small green shaded by trees, with old houses and a fine old church, this small market town of less than 3000 folk clusters round the crossing of two highways and hears the curfew twice a day. Between the town and Old Buckenham is an ancient earthwork overgrown by trees, known as Bunn’s Bank.

The church is a squat pile, full of ancient story and of an unusual plan. Saxon foundations are still to be seen, and a square Norman tower, once the central tower of a great Norman and medieval church, now rises at the east end, only a little higher than the clerestoried nave.

The whole of the eastern part of the great church was appropriated for the use of the College of the Holy Cross founded by Sir Robert Mortimer in the closing years of the 14th century, and was destroyed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries by the Earl of Sussex, who took the lead roofing and the marble stones and brasses of his ancestors for use in his manor house. It was perhaps as compensation to the townsfolk that the nave and aisles west of the tower were built 500 years ago. Figures of two Evangelists adorn the lofty porch, which has a lovely vaulted roof supporting its upper room; the roof has bosses of angels.

The tower has three Norman arches on clustered shafts with cushion capitals, two Norman windows over the western arch, and ornamental arcading. Its base now serves as the chancel. On the south side of the tower is the 13th-century chapel founded by Sir William Mortimer, who was taken prisoner in France, died in Paris in 1297, and was buried before the altar of his chapel. The chapel on the north side of the tower was built by Thomas Chaunticlere who was buried in it in 1378; it is used now for the organ.

The striking possessions of the church are the lofty arcades and the arresting screen, which, after being for about a century at the west end, is now in its rightful place, stretching across the nave and aisles in front of the tower and the chapel arches. The screen is one of the precious possessions of our English churches. It comes from about 1500, and still has its fine traceried loft from end to end, adorned along the front with brightly coloured shields of the English dioceses as they were painted on it soon after the Reformation. It is this old loft, complete across nave and aisles, which makes Attleborough’s screen unique. Much of the delicate carving of the vaulted canopy and the long string of arches is gone, as are many of the painted panels of the base; but two groups of panels in the upper bays (in front of which were side altars) still show imperfect paintings of John the Baptist, the Madonna, and St John; Thomas Becket, the Trinity, and St Bartholomew. The screen keeps its old inscription:

Put thy trust in God with all thyne heart
and Ieane not unto thine owne wytt.

On the east wall of the nave are angels and saints brought to light in our time, their rich red and green standing out against the white background. They are part of a huge wall painting which was found last century, only to be quickly hidden again under limewash. Several consecration crosses are painted on the nave walls inside.

The stalls in the chancel have misereres carved with heads, and arm-rests with griffins, a mermaid in a sea-shell with comb and bowl, and another holding a fish. The richly carved pulpit in classical style is said to have been made for one of the royal chapels, to have been sold by auction, and at last brought here by a team of donkeys; it is attributed to Grinling Gibbons. A 16th-century chest has three locks, a massive 17th-century almsbox is like an ironbound post, and there is Jacobean panelling in the south chapel. In the beautiful tracery of the west window is old glass showing angels and saints, and the dove descending as the Madonna kneels with an angel on each side.

Over the altar in Sir William Mortimer’s chapel is beautiful glass in memory of Maxwell Webb who was rector here till 1929. It is a charming picture of the Shepherds adoring; the Madonna is in blue, Joseph in brown with a lantern, and the crib is among flowers with two sheep at the foot. A flood of light falls on the Babe, and angels are above Him.

A floorstone tells of Captain John Gibbs, whose fame hereabouts was due to his driving four horses and a carriage up and down the deepest part of the Devil’s Ditch on Newmarket Heath; he did it for a wager of £500 in the time of Charles the Second.

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Worlington, Suffolk

All Saints, locked, keyholder listed, was the last church of the day and, despite the godawful cement render on the north side of the nave exterior, is really rather splendid. The key is in the cottage next door, so full of hope I knocked on the door and no-one was home. This is a pity because I've just looked up Simon Knott's entry and the interior looks to be full of interest - I've marked it down for a revisit.

ALL SAINTS. E.E. chancel, with one N lancet window and an E window with three stepped lancet lights under one arch. Dec W tower with a pretty W window with flowing tracery. Niches l. and r. of it. Finely moulded W doorway. Dec arcade of five bays with concave-sided octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. The sides of the piers have pointed trefoils applied to the tops. Perp aisles and clerestory. Simple nave roof, although with tie-beams alternating with hammerbeams. - ROOD BEAM. The cambered rood beam is preserved. - BENCH ENDS. Square-headed, with three stepped little arches or big flowers. - PLATE. Cup and Paten 1669.

WORLINGTON. A mile of loveliness brings us from Mildenhall to this small village, proud to have so fine a church. The tower, with a lofty arch to the nave and a handsome west door between two niches, has seen 600 harvests gathered in. The nave, with a fine south arcade and handsome pillars, is a century younger, the chancel a little older. There is an ancient roodbeam above the chancel arch, a font at which 20 generations have been baptised, a 14th century east window, a Jacobean pulpit, and splendid roofs over the nave and south aisle. Old glass glows in a few of the windows, the best being in a lancet in the chancel, and the church has much fine woodwork. There are over a dozen old benches, some perhaps the work of medieval carpenters, and under the chancel roof are embattled beams that have been here centuries. There is still a charming sanctus bellcot over the chancel, but the bell said to have rung in it long ago is now in the museum at Bury. In the belfry, however, there still hangs a bell which was ringing here 600 years ago; it is the only bell in Suffolk from the well-known Lynn foundry of Johannes Godynge.

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West Row, Suffolk

St Peter, locked, keyholder listed, is, and I don't often say this, an attractive Victorian build of 1850 [chapel] and 1875 [chancel]. I think aesthetically speaking it would be better if the chancel hadn't been added but even so it's very good of its kind. I didn't bother seeking the keyholder out as I was sure the interior would disappoint but perhaps the pulpit would have been worth seeing.

ST PETER, West Row. Built in 1850, convened into a church and chancel added 187 5. - PULPIT. From St Mary, probably mid C17.

Two miles away is the big agricultural village of West Row, with a church built from the materials of the old National School; it has a window in memory of Lawrence Clutterbuck, a curate’s son who gave his life to save a student from drowning.

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Beck Row, Suffolk

St John, LNK, is a rather dire Victorian build with a splendid CWGC plot attached [being a suburb of Mildenhall, it's exclusively dedicated to RAF casualties]. It's another one that both Pevsner & Mee missed.

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Kenny Hill, Suffolk

St James, redundant and now in the hands of American baptists, is a not too terrible Victorian build which neither Pevsner nor Mee mention.

Wangford, Suffolk

St Denis, redundant and now used by American baptists from the adjacent Lakenheath airbase, is a contender for the strangest visit to date. I parked in the viewing area and walked alongside the perimeter fence, then past a free range chicken 'farm' until I spotted the church. With hindsight I should have ignored the no unauthorised access sign and just driven to the church but I'm afraid at the time my nerve failed me, hence the distance shot.

ST DENIS. Nave and chancel Norman, W tower Dec. The N and S doorways have one order of shafts with scalloped capitals and altered arches. Handsome E window of c. 1300. Three lights, a big circle and in it a finely cusped pointed trefoil and three little circles. In the N wall pretty niche with a nodding ogee arch in the canopy. - PLATE. Silver-gilt Cup and Paten c. 1680.

WANGFORD. A village (near Brandon) with a small 600-year-old church alone on the heath, it is almost lost in the pine woods. The church has been refashioned, but has some medieval windows, a square Norman font, a holy water stoup in the porch, and a brass tablet to Dorothy Francklyn, a sister of Queen Elizabeth’s Attorney-General Sir Edward Coke, the lawyer who was not ashamed from his high place on the Bench to call Sir Walter Raleigh a viper. The village was the home of another ruffianly judge, Sir Robert Wright, who was born at Wangford Hall, still standing in the trees not far from the church. He was a vicious and ignorant fellow who made his way by becoming the tool of Judge Jeffreys. At the time of the Monmouth rebellion he was appointed Chief Justice, and daily sent deserting soldiers to be hanged in sight of their regiments. He presided over the trial of the Seven Bishops, but was unable to prevent the jury’s verdict of Not Guilty which sounded the death-knell of the Stuarts. With the landing of Dutch William, Wright was impeached for treason and corruption and fled into hiding, but he was discovered and flung into Newgate, where he caught fever and conveniently died in 1689.

Brandon, Suffolk

St Peter, LNK [why?], is a stunning building in a stunning churchyard but, whilst I obviously deplore the fact that it is inaccessible, I don't think, having read Pevsner, that the interior contains much of interest, so I shrugged my shoulders and moved on.

ST PETER. Early Dec chancel with two pretty E turrets with spirelets. For the dating see the windows and the chancel arch. The E window is of five lights, segment-headed, and has an irregular design with reticulated elements. Of the same time probably the W tower. Its doorway and window however are Perp. Of the same time also the five-bay arcade with unusually slim quatrefoil piers and arches with two small quadrant hollows. Perp N and S sides, Perp S chapel. - FONT. Plain, octagonal, C14. The stem has an octagonal core with eight detached shafts. - SCREEN. With one-light divisions. Rather arid. Only the lower parts original. - STALLS. With traceried fronts and poppy-heads. - BENCHES. Some with poppy-heads. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup; Paten 1776.

BRANDON. It is a little town where a thousand years are as yesterday, for men are doing here today what was being done before the pyramids were built. Fifty centuries will not take us back to the beginning of it all. The men of Brandon are knapping flints as they were doing when Hereward the Wake may have lived in the Fens close by, when the Romans were building London, when Homer was telling his immortal stories, and when Abraham dwelt in a tent. There is something to see here that can be seen nowhere else in England, stirring us with the thrill of immemorial time as a sound to be heard that has been going on for centuries and is perhaps soon to vanish for ever.

Everywhere in these old streets shaded by trees are flints. Most of the houses have flint walls; there are flints in the road, in the pavements, in the church. But Brandon is not all stone. There are dark pines round about it, and heaths with miles of firs and bracken, said to be one of the few breeding-places in England of the stone curlew; there is Brandon Hall, a delightful 17th century house in a Dutch garden; and an enchanting corner by the Little Ouse, where an old bridge with five arches brings us from Suffolk into Norfolk. Lovely meadows and woods, an old mill, and a charming inn among lawns and flowerbeds, all contribute to the making of a picture too delightful to be spoiled.

There was a church here before the Conqueror came over the heath, but the building we see is mostly 14th and 15th century, with queer gargoyles still looking down from the tower after 600 years. Among the rough flints in the walls are patches of brickwork looking rather odd. An old sundial says, So Passeth the Glory of the World, and, also outside, are two stone coffins perhaps belonging to Crusaders. The spacious north porch shelters a grand old door and a beautiful stoup.

Within are arches on handsome clustered pillars, a quaint company of corbels, a big 13th century font, and an east window whose unusual tracery has been admired since Chaucer’s day. There is a very old Bible, old pews with carved poppyheads, part of a 16th century screen with traces of painting in the panels, and a striking peace memorial window with three warrior saints. The beautiful chancel is the sleeping place of an infant Samuel, a little one whose nine months of life ended in 1854.

But it is not for the church that we come to Brandon, but because it is perhaps the first workshop in England, the spot where the first wholesale merchants were making flint weapons and tools long before a furrow had been ploughed in Europe. Here in holes in the ground, or perhaps in lake dwellings among the Fens, lived Stone Age men who made more flint weapons than they wanted and bartered them for skins and food. We can see the pits where they quarried flint, and there is still an ancient digging 80 feet deep where in modern times a fossil antler was found buried in the rock. It was used as a pick-axe over 5000 years ago, and thrilling it is to handle it. At Grimes Graves, a few miles away, are the astonishing tunnels these ancient quarrymen made; and on Lingheath Common we can see hundreds of pits where flints are still quarried.

The most exciting place in Brandon is a yard behind an inn, where we heard the tapping of a flint knapper in a shed close by, and found a man bending over his work as the Stone Age men had done. He had a leather pad on his knee and a hammer in his hand, and we saw him pick up a rough piece of rock, rest it on his knee, and strike it so skilfully that the flints flaked off as he wanted them. He was making flints for the old flintlock guns still used in the Congo and Malaya; and for the savages in the dark places of the earth he was making flints for kindling fires and killing game. It is an astounding thought that when the work of knapping flints began in this place the men who worked here were less civilised than the tribes for which these flints are made in our own day.

It is the oldest industry in England, 200 generations old, yet we spoke here with a man who may be the last of all the flint knappers. He learnt his art from his father, but his son knows nothing of this ancient trade. The breaking of flints for building purposes may go on for many years, but the demand for kindling flints is almost done. Yet in all our travels through the Motherland we have had few experiences more strangely impressive than this, of seeing a skilled industry which has been handed down unchanged from father to son, from generation to generation, from century to century.

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Weeting, Norfolk

St Mary, LNK, is a round tower church so what's not to like? Why it's kept locked is beyond my comprehension. Beside it lies the ruins of a C12 manor house. It's all really lovely.

ST MARY. Round tower, evidently rebuilt in the C19. Dec chancel and Dec N arcade. The former has a fine five-light E window with reticulated tracery broken into at the top by an octofoiled circle; niches inside to its l. and r. A similar simpler blocked N window. The N arcade is of four bays with piers with four main and four subsidiary shafts. In the nave Perp S windows with stepped embattled transoms. - BENCH ENDS. A number of old ones with poppy-heads. - PLATE. Two Elizabethan Cups and Paten, probably the cover for one of them; Paten, 1674-5.

WEETING CASTLE. Under the Ministry of Works, but not yet explored. The main range, probably of the late C12, consisted of a hall with two flanking additions. One of them is a substantial three-storeyed keep-like tower with an important first-floor chamber. Square moat, and apparently no curtain wall (S. E. Rigold).

WEETING. It has the old flint town of Brandon for its neighbour, and fitting it is that it should be so, for it is a very ancient place. Here on the heathland are many milestones in our story, and in a wood not far away we stand in one of the cradles of our race. We have by us as we write fragments of charcoal from fires lit in these places by some of the first men in these islands.

These fires were lit in the circular pits that lie in hundreds hereabouts and are known in prehistoric history as Grime’s Graves. Time was when these pits were thought to be the remains of a prehistoric village, but it is now known that they were the flint quarries from which the Stone Age men obtained their flints, the tools they worked with, the weapons with which they defended themselves and hunted their food. This was a busy world before Rome was heard of; the crack of the stone hammer was heard in this place before the pyramids were built in Egypt.

Young beside these old flint workings, but still ancient, is the earthwork known as Devil’s Dyke, a mound and a ditch not far from the Little Ouse which divides Norfolk from Suffolk here. Round about are many old burial mounds in which lie our ancestors far back in the mists of time.

We leap into history with the Normans, for here William de Warenne, the Conqueror’s brother-in-law, built a castle and surrounded it with a moat. The water still runs in the moat inside the park, and within it rise the romantic grey walls of the ruined castle, like pinnacles among the trees. Coming into this scene is the pretty flint church with its round tower and the great brick and stone Weeting Hall - more useful now than picturesque, for we found the old home of the Angersteins, which once had in it the nucleus of our National Gallery pictures, clustered about with huts and sheds. The great house, in which hung the 38 pictures bought by the nation for £57,000 from John Julius Angerstein, has fallen from its estate.

The little church has a 14th-century chancel and a 15th-century nave, and its round tower stands on Norman foundations. The clerestory windows, with clustered columns, are modern; perhaps the oldest possession is the font. There is a wooden cross from Flanders in memory of 12 men who did not come back.

Away from the group of castle and church and hall, but just within the park, are the ruins of an old church overgrown with creeper, gravestones about it in the shadow of the trees. The church was destroyed by the falling of the tower in the 18th century. In its great days the castle was the home of Sir High de Plaix, who founded Bromehill Priory 700 years ago. It has vanished, and a farm has taken its place; but it was interesting as the scene of much of the boyhood of Thomas Shadwell, who wrote a dozen comedies and tragedies in the 17th century. Dryden roundly abused him and poured ridicule upon him in his own verse, but Shadwell saw the tables turned, for he succeeded Dryden as Poet Laureate.

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Lynford, Norfolk

Our Lady of Consolation & St Stephen is, I believe, normally open but unfortunately it is currently locked and under scaffolding due to 'unsafe upper masonry and parapet'. I missed the Romanesque carvings.

CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF CONSOLATION (R.C.). By Henry Clutton, 1879. Small, a simple oblong with a circular bell-turret on a big  buttress. Knapped flint.

Another one Mee missed.

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Ickburgh, Norfolk

Mundford was the beginning of a series of locked, or not worthwhile attempting access, churches stretching down through Suffolk.

St Peter, LNK, was not helped by a seemingly impending storm which meant the light kept fading in and out and didn't do the building any favours. Having said that, this is a really dull pastiche although lavish. I can't imagine the interior would have improved my opinion.

ST PETER. Perp W tower, with diagonal buttresses and many set off's. The church itself rebuilt in 1865-6 at the expense of the third Lord Ashburton. The architect* was fond of big, unexpected figure and foliage carvings, especially outside, but also inside. Of the same time the low stone SCREEN, the stone PULPIT, the STAINED GLASS. - PLATE. Flagon, 1731; Salver, 1764; Chalice, unmarked.

ALMSHOUSES. Built in 1887 by Claire Eugenie Hortense, Lady Ashburton. Single-storeyed with half-timbered gables. Black-letter inscriptions.

* R. M. Phipson, according to Messrs Baggs and Young.

ICKBURGH. It is believed that a trackway older than the Romans may have linked it with the Icknield Way, but much that attracts us here is new. Thatched cottages, charming with creepered walls and flowers are strung along a byway, ending at the church and the almshouses. The homes of the old folk are attractive with gables and a garden bright with flowers, and across them is written, Abide with us, for it is towards evening, and the day is far spent. At the other end of the village is the white figure of a girl with a shawl over her head, resting on a rock with a wreath of remembrance for those who did not come back. It is an unusual monument to come upon by the wayside.

Except for its 14th-century tower the church was made almost new last century. It is all very neat, lit chiefly by candles, of which some are hanging and many on long sticks among the pews. There are some good modern carvings. Two bishops look out from the sedilia, and a chained bear is carved in oak on the hood of the north doorway. Eight minstrel angels look down from the ends of the roof beams, holding harp, fiddle, tambourine, bagpipes, guitar, trumpets, and organ. Very fine are two stone corbels most cunningly carved to support short clusters of shafts below the end arches of the arcade. One has a Nativity scene with ten figures; the star is shining on the stable, angels and shepherds are adoring, and the ox and the ass are looking on. The other is a canopied Temple scene, with Simeon holding Jesus, Mary and Anne kneeling, Joseph with a basket of doves, and a priest at his desk.

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Mundford, Norfolk

A seriously bizarre SW tower lends St Leonard, locked, keyholder listed, a certain charm but not enough to induce me to seek out the keyholders address, which may have been a mistake, given the Comper chancel. Having searched Flickr contacts I'm not so sure that I missed much.

ST LEONARD. Nave and chancel and a tower in a SW position, outside the nave. The chancel is E.E., see the three stepped lancet windows in the E wall, with fine outer concave quadrant mouldings, and the piscina inside. The chancel arch seems to be Perp. The nave is Dec - see the windows. The S porch of flint and brick is probably of the C17. The tower is of 1854 and has a saddleback roof with a little fléche. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with a foot opening out towards the bowl and three demi-figures of angels sticking out from it. - BENCH ENDS. Some with poppy-heads. - By Sir Ninian Comper, c.1911, the SCREEN, the ORGAN over it, the altar RETABLE, the terrible STAINED GLASS in the E window, the STALLS, and the prettily painted chancel roof. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten Cover, 1706.

I would say surprisingly, but I am accustomed to his hit and miss approach, Mee missed it.

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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.

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Northwold, Norfolk

I found St Andrew, open, rather sterile and damp - particularly the south aisle which had three or four drip buckets - and not of particular merit until I saw the fabulous Easter sepulchre in the chancel when, instantly became my church of the day. To be fair, apart from the sepulchre and some very faded wallpaintings, it is fairly run of the mill.

ST ANDREW. The story of the church begins with the beautiful arcades, which are mid C13. They have quatrefoil piers looking almost like a cluster of four independent shafts and capitals partly of rich stiff-leaf, partly moulded. The W bay is later, as the arches and responds show, but not later than Dec, which is clear for the mouldings as well as the aisle W windows. This needs stressing; for though they were surely added with a view to the erection of a W tower, the tower itself appears to be Perp throughout. Money was indeed left for its building in 1473. It is an ambitious tower. Diagonal buttresses with flushwork emblems. Such emblems appear also on the base frieze and a frieze above the doorway. Double-stepped battlements with flushwork panelling and eight pinnacles. The aisle and chancel windows are mostly Dec. So is the S porch entrance, but the S doorway belongs to the arcade. The arch mouldings are very varied. Ambitious, somewhat restless clerestory with a commemorative inscription. Three-light windows with knapped-flint surrounds and between them blank straight-headed transomed stone windows. The nave roof has hammerbeams alternating with arched braces starting from wall-posts. The latter stand on big figured stone corbels. The NE vestry is medieval and was originally two-storeyed. - FONT. A big C18 baluster (chancel). - EASTER SEPULCHRE. A very lavish composition of the late C15, unfortunately poorly preserved. Against the tombchest or base seated soldiers in agitated attitudes and little trees separating them. To the l. and r. badly damaged buttresses. Top cresting. The back wall of the shallow recess has busy vaulting in two tiers. - WALL PAINTINGS. In the N aisle; faint. - PLATE. Chalice and Cover, 1568. - MONUMENT. Robert Burhill d. 1727. A wooden tablet, with painted garlands l. and r. - Several good stone tablets.

NORTHWOLD. It lies off the highway, and has many old houses with cream walls and roofs of rich red tiles, a medieval church with flint walls and a 15th-century tower, and the shaft of an old wayside cross. The tower rises in four stages to a handsome crown of battlements and eight pinnacles. A 14th-century porch and a 13th-century doorway leads us to an interior spoiled by galleries along the aisles. The nave arcades are 13th century, the chancel 14th. Crowded with closed pews, the nave looks up to a lovely old oak roof adorned with angels, and resting on stone corbels of angels and grotesques. Its medieval colouring is renewed, the bosses shining with gold, the rafters painted with leaves, and barber’s pole pattern outlining the panels.

The great possession of the church is the 15th-century Easter Sepulchre, among the biggest and best in the land. It is 12 feet high and 9 long, and though sadly battered is still beautiful with a mass of delicate carving in niches and tabernacle work. Its three canopies have lovely traceried vaulting, and below the tomb are sleeping soldiers, battered and broken but recognisable as having been armed, and leaning on trees. On a wooden tablet to Robert Burhill, a profound scholar who was rector here from 1622 till 1641, we read that he “took sanctuary” in the church; he was an intimate friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, and helped him to write his History of the World. Long before his day they laid to rest here John Stalyng, for whose soul our prayers are asked in an inscription on the clerestory outside. His stone coffin is said to be bricked up in the wall.

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