Larling, Norfolk

Having decided not to seek out the key for Shropham I set off for St Ethelbert, LNK, and, by chance, when I arrived a very informative and welcoming lady was just finishing tidying up after their harvest festival so I got to see inside. Apart from a stunning Norman south door [normally locked behind the porch door], a middling to good east window and an interesting piscina and sedilla in the south aisle it's fairly average - but the location is stunning and by gaining entry I beat the man!

ST ETHELBERT. Perp w tower. Sumptuous Late Norman S doorway. Two orders of shafts, variously patterned. They have foliated rings round. Iambs and arch with all kinds of geometrical decoration. Chancel and S aisle of c.1300. In the aisle handsomely traceried windows and a piscina and stepped sedilia divided simply by stone arms. The chancel has more usual tracery and a small double piscina. Its dividing shaft incidentally is Norman. The S arcade has three bays, octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. - STAINED GLASS. Old bits arranged in the W window. - PLATE. Elizabethan Chalice; London-made Secular Cup, 1806.

LARLING. It has a pretty spot where a bridge spans the River Thet flowing through, with willows growing by the water and a timbered inn. The church stands alone in a field, with no road to bring us to its tranquillity. It has willows and iris growing in the marshy ground about it, and only the distant hum of traflic disturbs the song of its birds. Much of this simple flint building has stood here 600 years; the buttressed tower and some of the windows are 15th century. There are fragments of old glass, and the old altar stone, found last century under the floor, is now in its place. At the end of the south aisle a flight of steps leads to the doorway of the roodstairs, and here, at the side of a window with stepped seats and arm-rests in its sill, is a piscina carved with heads. There is a splendid Norman doorway with rich mouldings, one with balls and crosses and little heads of men. The upper halves of the shafts are carved with diamond, zigzag, and pierced bands, and on one of the pillars is a mass dial. At the crude font, with four tapering sides, the children of this village were christened 800 years ago.

Flickr.