Driving from Walsingham, the famous Priory Church of Binham looks like it has half-sunk into the fields. On arrival, the church and the extensive ruins of this Benedictine house are one of the greatest sights in the county.
Binham Priory
This Ascension Day walk was my third in the space of a week in company. Today’s walking partner was the Revd Charlotte Bradley, a very good friend who lives in St Albans, and is part of the ministry team at another church which has a pretty significant Benedictine heritage, St Albans Abbey.
I am learning, particularly on the longer walks, to visit the first church last. Otherwise, the last leg of the walking loses purpose. So we set off heading north on a footpath crossing not roads, but the three concrete of runways of RAF Langham, built at the beginning of the Second World War.
All Saints, Cockthorpe is in the care of the Norfolk Churches Trust. It has a good font. Behind this is a now-familiar sight of St Christopher facing the main entrance. To his left you can make out the words of the Ten Commandments: a later and rather more Protestant-minded wall-painting.
I last visited this church about a decade ago, when I would have agreed with Mortlock’s judgment that this is ‘a most pleasing and welcoming little place’. Two years ago, Simon Knott described it as ‘an open space despite its size, thanks to the clearing of clutter.’ More recently it has played host to a Christmas tree festival. This no bad thing in itself – indeed, I am sure it is very lovely – but the building has been re-cluttered with festive detritus. Surely there’s a barn (or hangar) locally where all this could be stored.
Cockthorpe's font
This prayer, written in calligraphy, is framed by the entrance:
Grant to us, Lord, the royalty of inward happiness, and the serenity which comes from living close to Thee. Daily renew in us the sense of joy, that we may bear about with us the infection of a good courage, and may meet all life’s ills and accidents with gallant and high-hearted happiness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It has some rather lovely sentiments – ‘the infection of a good courage’ is a glorious phrase – but I can’t help but think it’s been written by a 1930s prep school headmaster trying to translate ‘Pull yourself together, boy!’ into a prayer.
It was good to spend a day in priestly company. I spend quite a lot of my ‘normal’ life with other clergy, and this is the first time since the sabbatical started that I have spent more than five minutes with one. I first met Charlotte at the National Pilgrimage at Walsingham, probably about 20 years ago. One of her many qualities is having the world’s best memory. I know as I type this I’m going to get a text message telling me it actually the Youth Pilgrimage 18 years ago. We’re all proper adults now, and Elise and I are godparents to her and her husband’s oldest child, and her youngest was in utero almost simultaneously with our son.
On a day like this it’s not hard to see why the North Norfolk coast is a designated ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’, and the gently undulating countryside around the River Stiffkey is arguably the best bit. We crossed the river into the village which shares its name with the river. Stiffkey Stores serves excellent coffee, and effortlessly combines coffee shop, general stores, Post Office, interior shopping, and trendy children’s toys. Perhaps you would call it rural chic.
Stiffkey Church
St John the Baptist, Stiffkey is south of the coast road, looking over the valley beneath. In the south-west corner of the churchyard is a curious round tower set into the boundary wall. An almost identical one is a 100 yards further west, part of the Old Hall. I wonder what their purpose was.
It’s easy to miss near the entrance an A4 page of print which tells the story of the Revd Harold Davidson, ‘Little Jimmy,’ who was Rector from 1906 until 1932. After Sunday service Davidson would dash off to the brothels of Soho, returning in time for the following Sunday morning. In London’s seediest neighbourhood he was either ministering to the needs of prostitutes (if you believed him), or employing them (if you believed the press). His parishioners took the Rector’s side, whereas the ecclesiastical authorities believed what they read in the papers. The latter’s judgment prevailed, and the now-notorious Davidson was formally defrocked and denounced.
He found subsequent employment in the seaside resorts of Blackpool and Skegness, performing in the circus. ‘He sat in a barrel on Blackpool promenade proclaiming his innocence to holidaymakers,’ the story tells us, ‘who paid to see the defrocked Rector.’
In Skegness his act was to play the part of the Old Testament prophet, Daniel, reading Bible passages from a locked cage surrounded by tamed lions. On one fateful, final occasion a lion named Freddie reverted to type and began to maul Davidson. The crowd, delighted by this twist in the story, clapped and laughed with glee. By the time anyone realised that the lion’s attack was not part of the script, it was all too late.
Leaving Stiffkey we joined the coast path, looking out over the vista of salt marshes. Having crossed disused runways at the beginning of our walk, we could be in no doubt now of the existence of active Norfolk airfields. Fighter jets roared above us. This is not an unfamiliar sight and sound in Norfolk, but I have never known them be so loud. Living through the Second World War must have been terrifying.
The temperature edging into the 20s, we cut back inland via Cocklestrand Drove for lunch at the Three Horseshoes in Warham. This is the quintessential English inn: a series of stone-paved bars and rooms, serving excellent food and well-kept ales. It’s a favourite, apparently, of Lady Glenconner. If it’s good enough for her, it was good enough for us.
Walking up the lane to the church opposite, Charlotte spotted a vole in the undergrowth. He wasn’t at all perturbed by our presence. He accompanied us for 30 seconds or so, then disappeared into the hedgerow.
All Saints, Warham
Bordered by cow parsley and forget-me-nots is All Saints, Warham. This was never a big church, but it is smaller now that only one bay of each aisle remains (so forming transepts), and the tower collapsed.
At the same time as Harold Davidson was being disgraced and defrocked at neighbouring Stiffkey, this parish was settling into life with a clergyman who was as upright and civilised as Davidson was sensational and disreputable. His monument on the south wall reads:
Richard Henry Burdon Cattell M.A.
Rector of the Warhams 1928-1947
Captain of the English Rugby Football Team 1900
Chaplain to the Forces at Gallipoli 1915
This Tablet is placed in Remembrance by his Seven Daughters
I think that’s what you call muscular Christianity.
As well as an elephantine memory, Charlotte is one of those sickening people who can write a first-rate sermon, make a Victoria sandwich cake, organise a street party, and do the schoolrun all before the average person has poured milk on their cornflakes. It’s always satisfying then to discover something she doesn’t know, like the purpose of a three-decker pulpit. (Clearly it wasn’t in the syllabus at Westcott House.)
Interior of St Mary Magdalene, Warham
There is a fine one at St Mary Magdalene, Warham. Mark Chatfield, in Churches the Victorians Forgot, reckons there are around seventy ‘Prayer Book’ churches left untouched by nineteenth century, neo-gothic restorations. By this he means those churches the interiors of which comprise ‘low communion tables, three-decker pulpits, box pews and so on’. At Warham it is all-the-more surprising because, externally, it couldn’t look more like a standard Norfolk church. It’s worth climbing to the top of the pulpit to get some sense of what it must have been like to preach in a Georgian interior. There is still an eighteenth-century rail of hat hooks on the north wall.
It is fitting that the churchyard of a church in the care of the Norfolk Churches Trust should be the final resting place of that excellent charity’s founder, Lady Harrod. Her determination, energy and foresight saved so many Norfolk churches. She was a great friend of (and partner-in-crime with) John Betjeman, who also delighted in this church. Her monument on the south wall has in its border the first verse of Psalm 122: ‘I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.’ We have good reason to be thankful for Lady Harrod, that these words can still come from our lips in churches which might been lost without her.
By now it was hot rather than warm, a sultry May afternoon. The countryside glistened in the sun. Our route should have taken us back to Binham by Haystack Lane. However, the footpath from the road goes through a field which narrows at its furthest end. Unfortunately for us, that is where a herd of Friesians were grazing. We approached them cautiously, hoping they might shift. All but one obliged. The stubborn one, not content with gazing at us from the path we had hoped to tread, began to approach us. Clearly she was also the ring-leader, as, within seconds, they were all following her. We hastily – but not too hastily – retreated back to the road.
Interior, Binham Priory
The Priory Church of St Mary, Binham, the remains of the Benedictine priory which serves as the parish church, is the larger part of the old nave. This is a great Norman church, with an Early English west façade, and Tudor windows almost crudely inserted into the ‘new’ East wall at the Reformation.
It is a truly impressive space. However, I find the east end a bit flat, mostly, I guess, because the eye is being beckoned to what would have been beyond it. The small Stuart communion table is dwarfed by its surroundings, and I'm not sure the 1970s tapestry of Christ in Majesty above it quite works in the space. Admittedly it is a difficult space to make work, with the low window in the east wall, and a triple-arched piscina set in the east wall which one would not wish to obscure.
I remember thinking at the Coronation that Aidan Hart’s Anointing Screen, embroidered with the Tree of Life and a quote from none other than Julian of Norwich, might look good here. I have no idea if it would fit, but I wonder where it is now. If I was Rector of Binham, I’d be tempted to write to the King.
Binham Priory
Then there are the ruins of the medieval priory. Unlike Walsingham, the entire floorplan remains, and the ruins of the tower and east end of the priory church are substantial enough that it is not difficult to imagine what was here. There are few places in Norfolk as beautiful as this.
Another attraction of Binham, a stone’s throw from the Priory, is the Little Dairy Shop, where you can purchase raw milk from a machine which feels like it’s directly connected to an udder. There is also a vending machine of local cheeses, mostly from Mrs Temple’s Cheeses in neighbouring Wighton. Elise and I had a range of her cheeses – all named after local villages – at our wedding reception in Binham Memorial Hall. I think we can forgive the cows.
This was an immensely rewarding walk and pilgrimage: superb landscape, glorious weather, fine churches, and excellent company. As we criss-crossed the River Stiffkey, verses of a hymn by Joseph Addison kept springing to mind. Three of his hymns are found in modern hymnbooks, all of them underrated. His metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 was described to me by a friend as ‘The Twenty-Third Psalm according to an English Country Gentleman’. Addison would have felt very much at home in Warham’s Georgian interior, and I think he must have written this hymn on a day and in a place very much like this.
When in the sultry glebe I faint,
or on the thirsty mountain pant,
to fertile vales and dewy meads
my weary wandering steps he leads,
where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
amid the verdant landscape flow.
Though in a bare and rugged way
through devious lonely wilds I stray,
thy bounty shall my pains beguile;
the barren wilderness shall smile
with sudden greens and herbage crowned,
and streams shall murmur all around.
The River Stiffkey near Warham
Walk: 11 miles https://explore.osmaps.com/route/21487034/binham-circular-
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