Walk 40: East of Fakenham
- walkingnorfolkschu
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
The villages and countryside around Fakenham are beautiful without being remarkable; wherein lies their charm. As a consequence of being a good eight miles from the coast, they are wonderfully quiet and unspoilt.
Friday’s walk began at Christ Church, Fulmodeston, built in the centre of the village in 1882 to replace the abandoned medieval churches of Fulmodeston and Croxton. The story has parallels to that of the Victorian church in West Beckham (see Walk 37). The flint-faced exterior gives way to polychromatic redbrick inside, with a few bits of salvage from the old churches – including bench ends, and flushwork in the north porch. A later addition is a pair of chairs in the sanctuary, the backs of which double as icons of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.
The area around Fakenham contains what must be the highest concentration of ruined churches in the country. Frustratingly for my purposes, many of these ruins are difficult to visit by foot without taking one’s life into one’s hands on busy roads. But not so with the churches which Christ Church replaced. Each is situated close to a biggish house, but otherwise distant from the centre of population.
St Mary, Fulmodeston is hidden by trees at the end of a track. It is only once you have fought your way through those trees into the churchyard that its full ivy-clad walls and tower become visible. There is nothing physically to stop the visitor entering the main body of the church, but the presence of fairly freshly fallen pieces of stonework under the tower made me err on the side of caution. Peering up through the west window the remains of a bell-frame are just visible, but the sound of bells pealing across these fields belongs to a past age.
Half a mile to the west are the ruins of St John, Croxton. This was a smaller, tower-less church (or chapel). Vegetation here makes access to anything other than the west wall rather tricky. Early spring is the time to visit ruined churches, before nettles and brambles get into their stride.
The way-markers told me that I was now on the Walsingham Way, a pilgrimage route linking from Norwich to England’s Nazareth. Chiffchaffs and chaffinches chorused in the summer air as I made my way across the fields, joining a quiet lane crossing the old railway line between Fakenham and Thursford. Soon the octagonal tower of All Saints, Kettlestone appeared over the treetops.
Kettlestone is a peaceful village, the church on a bend in the road at its centre. Today the lychgate was flanked by crimson hollyhocks. The fifteenth century heraldic font is reminiscent of those at nearby Field Dalling and Hindringham; surely they are by the same hand. Here we are in the Way-Marker Benefice, pastored by the artistic Robin Stapleford. I suspect his is the contemporary ‘grown and made’ List of Rectors. I’m pleased he has left plenty of room for a few successors.
I crossed the old railway again, this time by road. Turning left onto a footpath, the tower of my next stop became visible across the fields. I like routes like this, where each church is visible long before you reach it. It’s where the word ‘steeplechase’ comes from, although I am glad not to be chasing them. I like the feel of being beckoned by towers, as if their bells were ringing out, calling me from one church to the next.
Once you are in the village, St Mary, Barney becomes entirely inconspicuous – which is surely part of its charm. The churchyard is a haven of wildlife. A couple of hens scarpered as soon as they saw me, while three ducks processed round the churchyard in single file, necks stiff and heads held high, for all the world like young seminarians at a papal mass. The screech of a barn owl from the eaves of the chancel caught my attention. I have a new app which identifies birds by their song. In the space of two minutes, it registered not only the owl, but also a whitethroat, house martin, wren, greater spotted woodpecker, blackbird, wood pigeon, sparrow, and yellow-hammer, not to mention the soundless red kite swooping majestically in the sky.
Inside the church the joy continues. Firstly, it is meticulously tidy, no doubt as a result of the redoubtable Josephine, who is churchwarden here. I know Josephine because she is faithful in attending the other churches of this benefice – where I help out from time to time – on the Sundays when there is no service in Barney. I adore a tidy church, simply because I find clutter can be such a distraction from prayer. Possibly without knowing it, Josephine makes this house of God easier to pray in. Praise God for her!
It’s also architecturally fascinating, with evidence of Saxon stonework, a good collection of corbels and bosses, and a Jacobean pulpit still with its brass plaques recording its donors. The south transept provides a neat little ‘Chapel of Corpus Christi and S. John’ in memory of the fallen. The roof has clearly been retiled very recently. The next round of fundraising must surely be for the stonework in the east wall of the chancel. The cracks from the apex of the roof extend down into the tracery of the east window.
A couple of miles east of Barney is St Edmund, Swanton Novers. Isolated from its village, this church was heavily restored first in the nineteenth century and, quite recently, in the 1960s. There is a crispness to the interior, but also a couple of vestiges of the past. In the chancel there is an exquisite fifteenth-century piscina with a pair of ‘W’ monograms encircled by Tudor roses, and, contemporary with it, the small carved font bears the same monograms. Clearly a significant benefactor.
This was the only church of the day in which I encountered human activity. A woman arrived with her husband to replenish the flowers. This was the hottest day of the year, and she was rather exasperated by how little of her arrangement had survived. The church was preparing to welcome the Richeldis Singers, a well-regarded local choir, to sing Choral Evensong on Sunday.
I had made a last minute decision to walk this route clockwise simply to ensure that the section of the walk through woodland occurred in the hottest part of the day. Swanton Novers National Nature Reserve contains 82 hectares of ancient woodland. I had noticed in Barney Church a display board detailing the Astley Estate’s project to enhance and safeguard this woodland, including the revenue-producing plan to build ‘two treehouses’. As I neared the end of my walk I stumbled upon them. They form a pair of eco-friendly, one-bedroom houses, built on stilts among the trees. They are quite remarkable.
As I joined the road back into Fulmodeston, the bell-cote of Christ Church summoned me back to my car. This was a pilgrimage among beautiful country churches. As I have so often found on these walks, the scenery and wildlife were as much an aid to prayer and rejoicing in the presence of God as the churches – which, even in the sultry heat of the hottest day of the year so far, is exactly why I walk!
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