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Walk 41: Felbrigg and surrounding villages

  • walkingnorfolkschu
  • 2 days ago
  • 6 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

Today’s walk was the second of three in the remarkably church-heavy triangle between Holt, Aylsham and Cromer.

I started at Felbrigg Hall, the seventeenth century bequeathed in the 1960s to the National Trust. It’s a handsome house. The words ‘GLORIA DEO IN EXCESIS’ are mounted in stone above the projecting bays of the upper storey windows. This is not the order we are accustomed to hearing those words, but it demonstrates Latin’s flexibility when it comes to sentence structure. Sheep graze in the fields around the hall – in fact, I had to get out of my car and move one out of the way as I drove to the car park – so this seems an appropriate piece of scripture. Sheep, after all, were the first to hear it.


I walked north-east of the house to the edge of the estate and beyond to St John the Baptist, Aylmerton. This church, with its neat Norman round tower, sits on a hillock above its village. Like Oxnead near Aylsham, there are ruins of a north transept which Mortlock (usually so reliable) fails to notice. The church still had its Harvest Festival decorations from a couple of weeks ago. There is a nineteenth century stained-glass window in the chancel with the inscription ‘A sower went to sow, and the reapers are the angels’. It shows Our Lord on one side, and two sickle-wielding angels on the other, gathering the wheat. It set the Harvest hymn To thee, O Lord, our hearts we raise in my head, which became the soundtrack to today’s walk. (I sing when I’m happy; I’m happy when I walk.)


During the summer I read Sarah Langford’s brilliant book, Rooted, which makes the case for regenerative farming. She is a champion of Britain’s hedgerows, and has made me more attentive to them. As I joined the Weavers’ Way I stumbled upon a particularly messy combination of hawthorn, ivy and brambles. In a few cubic feet was an astonishing biodiversity: ladybirds, wasps, at least two species of butterfly, a bumblebee, honeybees, and various flies.


Before I arrived at St Peter and St Paul, Sustead my footpath crossed a field which had clearly been very recently prepared for a winter crop, and over which no human footsteps had yet trod. It felt naughty trampling over it, but, as I did so, I saw the footmarks of all sorts of other creatures: birds and mammals. It reminded me of the opening chapter of Robert Mcfarlane’s The Old Ways, when he vividly describes walking through freshly-laid snow.


No two Norfolk churches are the same, but, to the untrained eye, Sustead is really very similar to Aylmerton: round tower, roughly the same footprint, it even has a demolished north aisle. The font has some very good armorial shields on its faces. Again, Victorian stained-glass caught my eye: two windows, one depicting the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the other the Prodigal Son.


This was the first of four churches on this perambulation which were not in or near their villages. Barely half a mile south is All Saints, Thurgarton, in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. (If you are visiting, note that you need to pull the door towards you while turning the handle. I almost gave up.)


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This round tower fell down, and was replaced a century ago by a vestry. The roof is thatched, and the internal roof structure in the nave is a thing of beauty in itself. Better still are the poppy-head bench ends – reminiscent of Cley – including a curly-trunked elephant carrying its howdah, a wolf or dog carrying its prey (a lamb?) on its back, and various musicians and mythical creatures.


On through country lanes to the village of Hanworth and its common. This is a proper common. There are cattle grids at its bounds, and notices telling villagers that they graze their livestock at their own risk. A cottage had a sign asking visitors to shut the gate – ‘cows on the loose’. However, it seems that the villagers don’t exercise their ancient rights. There was not a cow to be seen, nor evidence thereof.


Beyond Hanworth Hall, St Bartholomew, Hanworth is a good half a mile from the village. It is a handsome church, with a tall, Perpendicular tower. From the north porch – the main entrance – you get a wonderful view back towards the late seventeenth century hall – ‘a plain but very fine double-pile house’ according to Pevsner – and inside the church are lots of links to the big house, including monuments and memorials to the Doughtys and, more recently, the Barclays.


The five ‘working’ churches I visited today were spread over four different benefices. This one’s in with Erpingham et al, and, according to the October services list, there is no divine worship here this month. It feels like a church which isn’t much used. Every pew contained cobwebs and bat droppings. I reflected on how hard it must be for a church building to be at the centre of village life when it is nowhere near the centre of population. (And the population here is, in any case, tiny.) What is the future for churches such as this?


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I walked back towards the common along a lane lined with sweet chestnut trees. They give the impression of country grandeur, particularly as the hall came into sight again, but I had to do a fair amount of ducking and diving to avoid being hit by their spike-cased fruits.


Crossing a small field towards a copse of trees, I noticed a particularly vociferous herd of cattle gathered around the stile into the next field. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am slightly fearful of cows. As I neared these ones I couldn’t help but wonder if one of them was the wrong side of the fence. I edged closer. Was it an optical illusion? Was there a piece of fencing out of view, obscured by a tree, perhaps? The cow turned, and it became clear my instinct was right. I turned and retraced my steps to the road, by which time the cow had merrily made her way into the field I had just crossed.


I headed towards the adjacent farmhouse. As I entered the drive it became clear that this was no longer a working farmhouse. A charming gentleman came to the door, assured me that the chap who looks after the herd would be along in an hour or so, and that the wayward cow wouldn’t stray far. Better still, he showed me a route I could take through private land so that I could both avoid wandering Daisy without adding miles to my route.


I arrived, eventually, at St Andrew, Metton. Metton’s most interesting feature is the processional arch under the tower. I associate these with larger churches: St Peter Mancroft and St John Maddermarket, both in Norwich, for example. Walpole St Peter has one under the east end of the church.


Inside, this is a rather dark church, not helped by strangely wood-panelled ceilings in the nave and chancel. There are alarming cracks above the chancel arch. The village is tiny, and in the rota of services for October to January there are only two services scheduled here: Advent Sunday and a pre-Christmas carol service.


I had planned this route so that the last part of the walk would be towards the Felbrigg estate. The trees haven’t quite turned here in the way they have in London. It’s still an impressive autumnal sight, but it won’t reach its auburn, gold, crimson and bronze peak for another couple of weeks. I’ll have to come back in half-term.


St Margaret, Felbrigg is a church I have visited often. Today it was awash with activity in preparation for Sunday’s Harvest Festival. Every available inch was given over to pumpkins, apples, squashes, chestnuts, swedes, and turnips. A beautifully autumnal pedestal flower arrangement stood next to the altar. I spoke to an arranger who, with her husband, farms the land here. She admitted that there was not very much to celebrate this year. It’s been an especially hard year for farmers; this year has been as dry as last year was wet. But it was lovely, having visited several churches today which felt a bit sad, to be somewhere with vitality. Her husband, she explained, addresses the congregation each year at Harvest Festival. What a lovely tradition.


The day was peppered with short, but interesting conversations which I haven’t recorded in detail: prayers offered for someone with a broken vertebrae; a couple who rescue border-collies; a gentleman with particular interest in flint. After what has been a pretty hard-going few weeks in my own parish, it was a blessing once again to breathing in Norfolk’s air, and rejoicing in her churches.



I'll photos to @walkingnorfolkschurches on Instagram in the next couple of days

 
 
 

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