Norwich, St Peter Hungate

St Peter Hungate, I found it locked but the information board says that it's open Fri/Sat 10am-4pm and Sun 2-4pm or for group visits by appointment, is in the care of the Norwich Historic Churches Trust. As noted when I visited the Cathedral I don't have Pevsner for Norwich so here's some information from their website:

The latest acquisition by the Trust, this church was declared redundant in 1936, and was the first church nationally to be repurposed.

It became a very popular museum of church art, which closed in 1995. After a period of private occupation, it passed to the Trust in 2006. Since 2009, it has been the home of Hungate Medieval Art – an exhibition space celebrating Norwich’s medieval heritage and art.

Much had been done by the City Corporation (later, Council) to make it weathertight, but the chancel roof needed major repairs in 2016.

For more details here is a link to Simon Knott's Norfolk Churches entry.

I've now got Pevsner:

ST PETER HUNGATE MUSEUM, Elm Hill. Unbuttressed W tower with low pyramid roof. Two-storeyed S porch. Nave and transepts with tall four-light windows. In the nave they are in wall-arcading. The date 1460 appears on a buttress of the porch. The most interesting thing about the church is the roof, with hammerbeams and arched braces. They are set diagonally in the crossing so as to intersect. - FONT. Octagonal, simple, with quatrefoils on the bowl. - STAINED GLASS. Much in the E window, also whole figures of the late C15 and early C16. A mosaic of bits in the chancel S windows, fragments in the chancel N. - PLATE. Chalice and Cover, Norwich made, richly embossed, c.1620; Paten (Norwich) inscribed I675; two Flagons (London) 1680-1; Almsbasin (London) 1680 (?); Cup and Cover (London) 1734-5; Paten (London) 1735—6.*

* The exhibits of ecclesiastical art from Norfolk churches are of course not included in this list of furnishings.

St Peter Hungate church is at the top of Elm Hill, a narrow cobbled street with old houses, overhanging storeys, gables, and dormers. It is a charming peep of old Norwich. The church is a rare gem with an ancient story, and is unique for the new lease of life that has come to it. It has made history in our time, for, in becoming a museum for treasures of church art, it is the first example since the Reformation of an Anglican church put to secular use.

The ancient church was restored and partly rebuilt in the 15th century by John Paston and Dame Margaret his wife. Engraved on a buttress by the north door is a curious pictorial record of their making a new church out of the old, showing a leafy branch growing from the foot of a barren tree trunk on which are three crosses of the Trinity, and the date 1460.

Wearing a tiled cap in place of its vanished belfry storey. the low tower stands at the west end of a simple cross. The porch has an upper room. The walls inside are gleaming white, and some of the windows have beautiful glass of the 15th and 16th centuries. Some of the oldest is in the tracery of the west window, showing Our Lord, the Madonna, and musical angels. The east window is striking with its strips of old glass, rich and bright, showing over a dozen figures. In the tracery are angels with scrolls, a king, and a patriarch. There are two fine doors with medieval tracery, two tiny peepholes from the nave to the chapels, and a 15th-century font. But the crowning glory of this little place is the beautiful 15th-century nave roof with its richly moulded timbers, oak angels on the hammerbeams, angel corbels, and at the crossing a central boss carved with three figures.

As its congregation slipped away with the destruction of many old houses round about it, St Peter Hungate became one of the unwanted churches, and the splendid idea of using it as a casket for sacred and historic things was carried out in 1933. We found here a collection of musical instruments to which our grandparents sang hymns and psalms - including fiddles, flutes, and a hand organ; a fine collection of church plate; medieval carving in poppyheads and fragments of screenwork and arches; four charming tabernacle doors, with the daintiest of tracery; a silver cross adorned with amethysts and a ball of Blue John; illuminated manuscripts including Wycliffe’s Bible of 1380; and three lovely Books of Hours in brilliant colour, one French and one Flemish of the 15th century, the third East Anglian and a century older.