Hats off to the collaboration which has pulled off the Ten Towers Trail. Two team ministries have partnered with other agencies to publish a guided tour of ten churches - including arguably three of Norfolk’s finest – dotted around the Reepham area. It’s very well produced, including at its centre a reproduced OS map of the route. Judging from the comments in the various visitors’ books we signed it’s been a roaring success.
I enjoyed this walk – the longest so far – in the good company of Jeremy Bolam, a member of the PCC at Thursford. He is an avid walker for whom 15 miles would be a stroll in the park.
The route begins and ends at St Peter, Haveringland, marooned on a disused airfield. The church is undergoing extensive restoration. We were grateful for a quick look inside, but everything is currently covered in dustsheets.
St Nicholas, Brandiston, our first stop, is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. While there is always an inevitable sadness in a church being redundant, a common flipside is the improvement in the acoustics of buildings stripped of hassocks, hangings and all the general paraphernalia which gathers in active churches. I’d like to hear some Bach violin sonatas here.
Next to St Michael and All Angels, Booton, the product of an eccentric Victorian clergyman and Pocohontas descendant, Whitwell Elwin. The whole thing is outrageous, and not to everyone’s taste. Jeremy Haselock describes it as ‘ghastly’.
Booton
At the west end a minaret-like structure is flanked by two slender towers at 45 degree angles. Pinnacles rise from every possible orifice. Inside is a complete scheme of excellent stained glass by Cox, Sons and Buckley. It is by far the most tasteful part of this building, but at the expense of natural light. Everything else is out of proportion, including the chancel arch and the lofty vicar’s stall. (I’m not sure humility was a virtue Elwin possessed in spades.) The angels on the hammerbeam roof are so enormous you fear they are going to bring the whole thing crashing down any moment.
This church too is redundant and in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It is a fascinating building, but I cannot imagine it was a joy to worship in. Last time I tried to visit it was closed for ‘champing’. (The CCT lets some of its churches for people to camp in.) I’m not sure I’d want to holiday here either.
Jeremy is an excellent walking partner. He came to Norfolk as a young man having sold his restaurant in Battersea. He took over Cley Mill, a B&B-cum-restaurant, which, at the time, belonged to a certain Colonel and Mrs Blunt. Their son, James, later rose to fame with his single ‘You’re beautiful’. Jeremy then ran a B&B in Thursford. Now he looks after gardens, as well as sitting on (it would seem) every council and committee which exists in his village, and organising regular rambles.
Cawston's screen
We had already spotted the vast tower of St Agnes, Cawston, over the fields. In a county of flint and flushwork, this stone tower is as plain as Booton is fantastical. Internally it is glorious. Angels, proportionate to the roof they carry, hover above. The highlight, surely, is the medieval rood screen, surely one of the finest (and largest) in Norfolk. The images are either remarkably unscathed or superbly restored. St John looks in surprise at the dragon rising from his chalice. St Matthew holds a pair of spectacles to his face to inspect his gospel.
It is difficult to image a more splendid church than Cawston, let alone that there might be one only two miles away. We joined the Marriot’s Way, tracing the old railway line from Aylsham, and then across the fields to St Peter and St Paul, Salle.
Proportion is everything here. From a distance it appears smaller than it is – the same is true in photographs. It is only when you arrive that you appreciate its scale.
Salle Church
I have visited Salle many times, and I always forget just how wonderful it is. Is it the finest parish church in Norfolk? Part of the delight is the way in which it is both stunning as a whole – the vista looking east from the font with light flooding through the clear and stained glass is magnificent – and yet contains so many individual items of exceptional beauty: the carvings in the hammerbeam roof, the chancel misericords, the seven sacrament font and its cover, the detail of the stonework around the piscinas in both transepts; the roof bosses in the rooms above south and north porches; the hourglass pulpit with appended Georgian reading desks. I could go on.
Interior, Salle
Salle is no museum though. It is a building which breathes prayer. That’s partly its idyllic setting. Surrounded by lush fields, it has only the old school and a cricket field for neighbours. There is a superb tranquillity here. But I think it’s sense of serenity is chiefly because it is a building so lavishly built to the glory of God. It does everything a church building should do. It communicates transcendence, a place where with Jacob we might exclaim, ‘How awesome is this place!’ And, at the same time, it is a place of intimacy. In the south transept there is a framed quote of Julian of Norwich, whose feast day coincided with our visit. The passage ends, ‘In this love we have our beginning, and all this shall we see in God without end.’ Salle Church draws us into that love.
Jeremy is not into the intricacy of church architecture as I am. On a couple of occasions, realising I was keen for a good look round, he would excuse himself. ‘I’ll just go and grab a coffee. Take your time.’ But Jeremy must be an indispensable PCC member, as he has an eye for the practical. Whereas I would walk into a church and be drawn to an angle piscina, Jeremy would be noting the heating system. ‘We could do with that at Thursford.’ I am really enjoying meeting so many committed lay people in Norfolk’s churches and hearing about the joys and (not insignificant) challenges that they face.
Reepham is a charming town. Its lanes lead to a market place, flanked by historic buildings ranging from grand Dial House to quaint, crooked shops and houses. It would be so much improved if it didn’t also serve as a car park.
Reepham’s single churchyard contains not one but two church buildings, and evidence of a third. They were three separate parishes, united in 1935. All Saints, Hackford was mostly destroyed by fire in 1543, and the rest (apart from a fragment of the porch) demolished 250 years later. The nave of St Michael, Whitwell now functions as a community space. A keep-fit class was in progress as we popped our heads round the door.
St Michael, Whitwell (L) and St Mary, Reepham (R) in the same churchyard
St Mary, Reepham, is now the parish church. Its fold-out guide is superb: well-presented, giving the right amount and level of information for the general visitor, and, most impressively, providing a short prayer for every part of the building. Literature in so many churches gives the impression that the community cares only about the building, and not the God to whose glory it was built. At Reepham, the visitor is invited to be a pilgrim:
Bless, O Lord, our coming in and our going out, and keep us safe, through Him who is the door of the sheep, even Jesus Christ our Lord.
We left Reepham, crossing fields into woodland, crossing a meandering spring. I am thankful that I have timed my sabbatical for late spring. Jeremy loves the countryside at this time of year. ‘Just look at it. I wish we could freeze it.’
In the Middle Ages, England became known as ‘Mary’s Dowry’, such was the strength of devotion to Our Lady. Consequently, we have well over two thousand churches dedicated in her honour. Our next church retains the title of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Great Witchingham, celebrating Mary’s entrance into glory and reunion with her Son.
Norfolk is famous for its seven sacrament fonts, but many are so defaced that one struggles to work out which sacrament is which. Not so here. The carvings are extremely well-preserved, and retain a good deal of their colours. A priest elevates the host at Mass at a baldacchino-covered altar, on which a chalice rests. Behind him an acolyte lifts up a candle, its flame still red. What wonderful teaching-aids these fonts must have been, and hopefully still are. One could spend a whole confirmation class standing round one.
Detail of the font, Great Witchingham
I didn’t know Jeremy well before today, and, if I am honest, I was slightly apprehensive about sustaining eight hours of conversation. I needn’t have been. That’s partly because Jeremy is a great talker, but also because, as Graham Usher observes in The Way Under Our Feet, conversation is so much easier when two people are moving, in-step, side-by-side. Human beings spend so much of their time having conversations face-to-face, opposing one another, with the all the complexities of body language and eye contact. Conversation flows so much more freely when you are both facing the same way.
Our conversation seemed to cover almost everything: politics, religion, the nuances of North Norfolk, family, love, relationships. We had a fascinating conversation about assisted dying. I once had one of the most fruitful supervisions with my curate when we walked rather than sat. I must resolve to have more meetings like this.
Had we visited St Faith, Little Witchingham 52 years ago we would have found it largely reclaimed by nature and falling into ruin. Its restoration in the 1970s revealed one of the most complete scenes of medieval wall-paintings in the country, remarkably preserved by whitewash for several centuries. This was our third church of the day in the care of CCT.
Interior, Little Witchingham
Yet another good seven sacrament font awaited us at St John the Baptist, Alderford. Then, finally, St Margaret, Swannington, which contains a Norman pillar piscina. I don’t think I’m come across one before.
As we returned to Haveringland, having racked up a good 17 miles (a couple more than the printed leaflet suggests) the builders were just leaving. I reflected on how every Norfolk church has a story of restoration and rebuilding. It’s reassuring that the stories carry on today.
Walk: 15-17 miles The 10 Towers Trail
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