I stayed overnight on Monday at the King’s Head, North Lopham. I snuck in for a pint just after nine o’clock, hoping to blog away in the corner while locals played cards. But crib night had finished, and it was just the landlord and me either side of the bar.
Martin and Louise Griffiths have been here less than a year, and are doing a fabulous job as custodians of this eighteenth century thatched inn. It’s a proper local: weekly crib and quiz nights, Sunday roasts, local ales, and, the jewel in the crown of a genuine country pub, carpet. There's innovation too; street food comes to the car park on Saturdays.
Martin has had a varied career. Since running a Yorkshire pub in his 20s, he’s spent a considerable time in the aviation industry. When Covid brought that to an abrupt halt, he went into the funeral business in Essex. At this point he began to explore his faith more, and was confirmed a few years ago.
The Lophams, two villages in touching distance of one another, are part of the Diss Team Ministry. The Diocese is currently advertising for a new Team Rector and Team Vicar, so Sunday services at either 9.30am or 11am are fairly few and far between. The later time just isn’t doable for a publican opening at noon, so Martin gets to church when he can. He reached for the parish magazine at the end of the bar, with its two pages of service times. 7 April was the last time that was possible.
I wonder, in our seven day working weeks, how many people can't come to church, rather than won't. I guess that's why, even in the days before Sunday trading, eight o'clock Holy Communion had such an enduring popularity. In my own parish, this is the service which has grown the most since Covid. Pre-pandemic we hovered around 10 people. We now regularly get more than 20.
Tuesday’s walk was going to be the Thetford to Brandon stretch of the recently revived Walsingham Camino. However, our four-year-old was off nursery under the weather, necessitating a shorter day in order to get back to take my share in the childcare.
Canon Jeremy Haselock, who was Precentor of Norwich Cathedral for 18 years and a member of the Diocesan Advisory Committee, had been trying to persuade me to include a church a few miles north of here. ‘Whatever you do, don’t miss All Saints, Wilby,’ he messaged me at the weekend. A short route quickly planned, and off I went.
I started the walk at Quidenham. The church was locked, but it was only just eight o’clock. On my map, half a mile from the village, was marked ‘Quidenham Hall (Carmelite Monastery)’. Doubtful this community would still be in existence, I was not surprised to find a sign on the gate advertising an educational establishment. Google maps confirmed that the hall was ‘temporarily closed’. But, just as I prepared to carry on, I noticed a sign, partially covered in ivy, which suggested that perhaps there was still a religious community here.
Entrance to the Carmelite church in Quidenham
I ventured onto the estate, crossing a little hump-back bridge over the River Wittle. Various outbuildings are used for farming and businesses. Eventually a big Georgian hall came into view, with a neo-Romanesque tower rising incongruously from it, and a wooden sign proclaiming, ‘To the monastery.’
I went to the reception, and pressed the intercom. No answer. But then a bell rang from the tower. I tentatively pushed open the chapel door, leading into a narthex stocked with soaps and greeting cards. Here the sound of thin voices singing plainsong beckoned me through the next door, and into the chapel where Mass was being celebrated.
Inside the Carmelite church
The sisters were singing the Communion antiphon, heard but not seen. They occupied a transept, left of the altar. One sister came to the altar to receive the chalice, and returned to her enclosure with the celebrant to distribute Communion to the other seventeen sisters. (The priest left his radio microphone on, so I was able to count recitations of 'The body of Christ'.) Resident retreatants worshipped from the opposite transept, while I joined three others kneeling in the nave.
There is something very beautiful about worship in a monastic setting. It is entirely unhurried, because, of course, there is nothing else to do. I know how easy it is to rush prayers. ‘I’ll just say Morning Prayer quickly before I go and do such-and-such…’ While it is better that prayers are said quickly than not at all, these Carmelites remind us that there is nothing more important than prayer and worship. We should rush everything else so that we can be still in the presence of God. ‘We are here to learn, on behalf of all, what it means to believe in Jesus,’ this community states on its website, ‘to take Him as our only Saviour, our healing and our holiness.’
One of stations of the cross in the Carmelite church
Mass finished, I wandered around the monastery church. The stone Stations of the Cross are stunning; the only colour being the halos picked out in gold leaf. I briefly wondered about trying the sisters’ intercom again so I could say hello, but thought better of interrupting their breakfast.
On I went, encouraged by this prayerful presence deep in the Norfolk countryside. I approached Wilby via a bridleway and footpath – the only stretch of this walk not on tarmac. Like Scole the previous day, All Saints, Wilby was gutted by fire, and therefore has a complete interior, not of 1963, but 1633. ‘You won’t regret it,’ Canon Haselock had said. Rounding the church to the south porch my heart sank. ‘Closed until further notice for chancel roof restoration.’
Wilby
It didn’t matter. At the risk of an appalling pun, whatever will be Wilby. It is much more important that this important church be restored for future generations than I get a chance to look round it. I admired the exterior. Like a lot of Norfolk churches, Wilby has putlog holes – unfilled square gaps in the masonry which held wooden scaffolds at the time of construction. Wilby’s are unusual in that the ends of the scaffolds remain, in some cases jutting out from the wall. Perhaps medieval builders inserted these timbers impatiently, before the mortar had dried, and, building complete, were unable to remove them.
There are two villages in Norfolk called Eccles. Given the name comes from the Latin for church, I’m surprised there aren’t more. St Mary, Eccles, a lonely round-towered church, is up a track 200 yards from the road.
Eccles church
On entering, the twentieth century rood immediately draws the eye, just as its predecessor would have done 500 years ago. It was donated by the then Rector, Canon William Maurice Harper-Mitchell, in memory of his sister Gladys, who died in 1957.
That so much attention was lavished on this church in living memory seems scarcely believable today. This was the 110th church I had visited in just over five weeks, and the most melancholy-inducing yet. Somewhere beyond the rood, birds were noisily nesting, unhappy at the arrival of a human visitor. Daylight was visible through the roof. Plaster peeled off cracked walls, revealing crumbling mortar underneath. A broken window has been patched up with an old notice advertising 'teas, coffees and cakes at the hall'. I have no doubt that the church looked atmospheric for a candlelit carol service, but half-burnt pillar candles gathering dust on every available horizontal surface is a sad sight. On the organ at the front was grouped half a dozen icons and some Orthodox prayer books, suggesting that an Orthodox congregation gathers – or gathered – here sometimes.
Interior, Eccles
The old north porch is a vestry containing memories of happier days. Photographs of Canon Harper-Mitchell, surrounded by suited churchwardens, young servers and choirboys, hark back to an age when farming provided local jobs and population and community. More recently, a photograph from 1987 shows the restoration of the bells. Today, the pews are full of books, DVDs and jigsaws for sale. There was no evidence of service times, nor of personnel connected to the church. I prayed here, as I do in every church, but with a heavy heart. There is next-to-no population here, and there are churches in the tiny villages of Wilby and Quidenham a mile in either direction. It isn't redundant, but it doesn't feel far off.
Back outside, I surveyed the roof. It is not just the case of a few missing tiles. Sections of the chancel roof sag in such a way that a few second-hand hardbacks aren’t going to fix. Until less than a century ago, our forebears would have deroofed this church. (See my posts on Tivetshall St Mary, Wiggenhall St Peter, and others.) It was often the kindest thing to do, because it allowed the church to become a ruin gracefully, rather than risk the damage caused by a roof caving in. Our attitudes to conservation have shifted enormously since then, but I find it hard to visualise an alternative here which doesn't involve a lot of money. Surely some tough decisions lie ahead.
Quidenham church
I left glad that Quidenham was locked first thing. I didn’t want to finish this walk on a low. The vroom-vroom of nearby Snetterton had accompanied most of this walk, but now a cuckoo – the first I have heard since Walk 8 in the Wiggenhalls – cheered my steps. St Andrew, Quidenham, had been unlocked now, and I sought forgiveness for the many keyholders I have taken for granted over these weeks.
The lower section of the round tower has bricked-up, circular windows, dating it to Saxon times. The upper, octagonal section is Perpendicular, and surmounted by a spire. (I had spotted Banham’s spire over the fields earlier in the walk. Rare to have two in such close proximity in East Anglia.)
Inside is, in Mortlock’s words, ‘rather dark’. He’s not wrong. This is the first church in which I’ve had to turn the lights on! The Second World War had a massive impact on this parish. Snetterton Heath was built as an RAF base, but almost immediately handed over to the American 96th Bomb Group. Harper-Mitchell, who we met at Eccles, had a prodigious ministry among the young men on the base, inviting them to worship in this church, as well as taking services in the airfield chapel. The side altar, its furnishings, and a stained glass window of a squadron member gazing up at the risen Christ, were dedicated in memory of those who, in that Rector’s words, ‘came from across the Atlantic in the hour of need to give their all for the welfare of mankind.’
The side chapel, Quidenham
I wouldn’t recommend this walk. Too much of it is on roads, some of which are sufficiently busy to necessitate frequent jumps onto a steep verge. The scenery is pleasant, but not spectacular. Nonetheless, amid the disappointment of Wilby and the melancholy of Eccles, I was very glad to have stumbled upon the Carmelites at Quidenham.
There is very little midweek religion in rural churches, so this was the first time on my travels I had visited a church during divine worship. Words of Betjeman, this time describing the convent in Ditchingham, sprang to mind: ‘A place to think of when the world seems mad with too much speed and noise.’ And think of it I did as I rejoined the clamour of London’s traffic.
Walk: 6.7 miles
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