Walk 39: The Saxon Shore

This route loosely followed the Norfolk Coast Path stopping at seven historic churches – none of which I had visited before. Making use of the Coastliner bus service, it can be extended or shortened to wherever there is a bus stop.

I began at St Mary, Burnham Deepdale. This has long been on my must-see list because of its Labour of the Months font. But this is no ‘one trick pony’ of a church. At some point in its more recent history somebody has skilfully collected fragments of stained glass. Particularly charming is the round-headed Saxon window in the base of the round tower, showing Mary Magdalene and an angel with a gravity-defying thurible.

It’s worth saving the font till last, as this is one of those churches which is so dimly lit it takes a while for the eyes to adjust. Norman and square, three sides of the font show twelve panels, each depicting a labour of the month. The same labourer appears in each, first, in January, drinking from a horn. (No such thing as dry January in the eleventh century!) He is then warming himself by a fire in February, digging in March, and pruning a vine in April. Moving to the east side, he is beating the bounds with a Rogationtide banner in May, weeding in June, hoeing in July, and binding corn in August. Further agricultural tasks occupy him in September and October. In November he is preparing to slaughter a pig. Each of the first eleven panels show the man facing the next, until we reach December, when he is joined by his family and enjoying Christmas dinner. And so we discover the destiny of the pig.

Font, Burnham Deepdale

I pray in every church I visit using prayers I prepared last year before my sabbatical. It is always cheering, however, when a suitable prayer is provided for pilgrims, as it was here in the north aisle:

O thou who dwellest not in temples made with hands, yet dost sanctify with the glory of the presence the place set apart for thy Name; come, we pray, in thy holy love into thy church and into the hearts of thy people, to make us truly thine.

Burnham Deepdale doesn’t really belong to the rest of the Burnhams slightly inland. Indeed, like all the churches I visited today, it’s part of the Hunstanton and Saxon Shore benefice. I followed the coast path past Branodunum Roman Fort, of which only the earthworks remain, and headed back inland to St Mary, Brancaster.

This is a handsome and beautifully proportioned building – and impeccably kept. The plain font is surmounted by an intricately carved font cover of 1493. The guide mentions two poor man’s boxes, one at the west end of each aisle, but the north one appears to be missing. It was (or, they were) made with three locks, requiring the priest and both churchwardens to be present when opening it – not unlike the practice of countersigning cheques. It is still in use. Above it has been installed the now ubiquitous contactless donation point, providing a nice touch of ancient and modern.

I am often intrigued by people’s entries in church visitors’ books. A month earlier a visitor from my own home of Enfield had written, in capitals, a single name, and, in the comments column, ‘SWARM OF BEES.’ They were still buzzing harmlessly in the clerestory during my visit. The following entrant left no name, address or comment, but instead provided a (very skilful) sketch of a robed priest. I recognised the style, but can’t think from where, so perhaps the artist is an ecclesiastical Banksy.

Half a mile further down the coast road is St Mary, Titchwell with its Norman round tower. Burnham Deepdale and Brancaster’s churches are only metres from the main road, but this tiny church is tucked away between the end of a lane and the salt marshes beyond. The setting is idyllic.

St Mary, Titchwell

This benefice is in vacancy, and has been for quite some time. Yet every church I visited today felt lively. There is a service most Sundays in most churches, and here at Titchwell – the smallest of the villages – a meditation group, ‘Stillness’, meets on Fridays.

The coast path is diverted inland from Titchwell using country lanes and a footpath through farmland. Photographs in the relevant chapter of the excellent Cicerone Walking the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path show the author layered up and walking through fields several inches thick in snow. By contrast, I was walking on the hottest day of the year so far, and I was grateful not to be on tarmac for too long.

All Saints, Thornham is also on the coast road, but sat back in a huge expanse of churchyard, and approached via a yew-lined path. The large and beautifully proportioned nave is impressive, but the little tower looks, in contrast, like it’s been outgrown. One enters through a postern cut into the handsome fifteenth century door. The width and height of the nave give a great sense of light and space. The Victorian chancel feels incongruous, however. ‘Without much character,’ is how Mortlock sums it up. To step from the nave eastwards is move from Norfolk Perpendicular into something which feels like it belongs in South London.

There is lots of interest here, including the base of a rood screen depicting figures from the Old Testament, good bench ends, and a font with painted shields.

This was the second of two churches to provide hot drink making facilities for visitors. Indeed, here at Thornham they have sensitively transformed the west end of the south aisle into a seating area, with new (and comfortable) armchairs, surrounded by shelves of second-hand books. It is a genuinely welcoming space. (Any clergy reading this who are ready for a move, check out this benefice!)

From Thornham the coast path heads out towards sea, with salt marsh on one side, and cattle grazing in fields on the other. This landscape eventually gives way to Holme Dunes and a beach scattered with grateful sunbathers. My wife and I are currently powering our way through the Ruth Galloway series of murder mysteries by Elly Griffiths. I had realised that the fictional cottage of the archaeologist-turned-sleuth, Dr Galloway, must be set near Thornham long before I had worked out whodunnit. But I didn’t know that the ‘seahenge’, an important site in the first novel, is was based on an actual Bronze Age timber circle, discovered in 1998, and subsequently dug up for preservation in King’s Lynn. The layers of history in this part of the county are phenomenal.

The prominent Perpendicular tower of St Mary, Holme-next-the-Sea had been visible inland for most of this stretch of the coast path. Arriving in the village I felt like I had crossed an invisible border between North and West Norfolk. Carstone, not flint, is the principal building material of the houses here.

St Mary, Holme-next-the-Sea

This is a strange church. The tower, on the south side of church, doubles as a porch – like at Holkham and Colkirk. Lifting the latch into the church, I expected to find a lofty medieval nave the other side of the door. Instead is a sort of anteroom leading you diagonally to another door into a surprisingly plain and aisleless late eighteenth-century nave and chancel. I couldn’t help but feel that Thornham’s nave merited Holme’s tower!

A footpath from Holme, running alongside the River Hun, takes you past Hunstanton Golf Club to the newer part of Old Hunstanton. Heading inland from the Victorian villas and guesthouses, the other side of the A149 is old Old Hunstanton.

St Mary, Old Hunstanton is an impressive church, emphatically restored in the late nineteenth-century. My visit here was brief as I had a bus to catch. A woman came into church with her mother – I suspect from having tended a grave – and lit a candle. In Brancaster, a man had come into the church and headed straight for the front pew to pray. Not only was every church I visited today open, but they all had signs advertising the fact. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of open churches.

The key motivation for this peregrination was to see the font at Burnham Deepdale. I reflected on it as I walked. The seven sacrament fonts of the late medieval period – for which East Anglia is renowned – have a clear and explicit catechetical purpose. The theological significance of Deepdale’s font is more subtle, but no less profound. The scenes it portrays are entirely secular, but I wonder if that is precisely the point. The calling of the baptised is to find sanctification in every area of our lives.

When this font was carved in the eleventh century, the future of most of the babies baptised in it would have been agricultural. The carvings on the font were – and can still be – a reminder that we carry our baptismal calling into the humdrum and ordinary parts of our existence. We find God in the secular as well as the sacred.

In that vein, one of the mundane joys of today’s pilgrimage was that five of the seven churches visited had loos which were open and available to visitors. I think this was my first rural walk around Norfolk’s churches which didn’t necessitate a wild wee.

Walk: 13 miles https://explore.osmaps.com/route/27375438/burnham-deepdale-to-old-hunstanton-7-churches

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