Walk 43: Ickburgh, Lynford and Mundford

People unfamiliar with Norfolk assume it is a landscape lacking in contrast. My trio of walks last week could not prove them more wrong. Thursday was spent in the gently undulating pastures of North Norfolk. Friday took me from the Broads to the North Sea coast path. And Saturday was spent in the Brecks, treading the sandy soil on the banks of the River Wissey. (For reasons I will explain later, I am writing this final walk up a few days after the event.)

The three churches I visited are all within a stone’s throw of the busy A1065. I began at St Peter, Ickburgh. A lane lined with houses ancient and modern leads from the main road. Where the houses stop, either side of the road, are the church and some arts-and-crafts almhouses. The lane continues beyond, seemingly to nowhere. We’ll come onto that later.

I was greeted by the sight and sound of a lawnmower being taken through its paces in the churchyard. Its driver was the treasurer, whose wife is the churchwarden. I explained what I was about, and he kindly went to fetch the church key from his home.

Apart from the fourteenth century tower, everything here is from an 1860s rebuild. It reminded me a little of St Andrew, Thursford, which (I’ve looked it up) was restored only a couple of years earlier. Externally, the church boasts a set of particularly ghoulish gargoyles. Some seem oversized, as well as redundant (i.e. there is an empty hole where drainage would have once flowed). They are either the realisation of a vivid Victorian imagination, or perhaps they were salvaged from the medieval church.

The lane continues beyond the church towards the Stanford Training Area, more commonly known as STANTA. The Ministry of Defence requisitioned this area of 33,000 acres during the Second World War. The residents of the six small villages were hurriedly moved out. Once the war was over, the training ground was too good a resource to let go, and the people of Stanford, Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Sturston, West Tofts and Tottington were never to return. One of them, the treasurer told me, was a child at the time, and still lives in Ickburgh.

I asked him what it was like living so close to STANTA. It is odd, he admitted, to hear the occasional explosion in the Norfolk countryside. Tours are sometimes arranged for local residents. I’d heard before about a replica Afghan village. There’s also now a mocked-up Eastern European village in response to the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

I had expected STANTA to be surrounded by 12-foot-high fences and barbed wire, like the RAF base at nearby Lakenheath. Instead, the only thing stopping the would-be intruder hopping over the fence is a suite of signs warning of live ammunition and danger of death. That’s enough of a deterrent for me. The Norfolk Churches Trust arranges the occasional coach tour of the abandoned churches within the training ground. (I think they put the guns away first.) As much as I would like to see these churches, I really want to walk a pilgrimage round them, as I am all these other churches. But I suspect the MoD would take some persuading.

It was a chapel in the care of the Norfolk Churches Trust to which I was heading. Gunfire was being opened in the distance as I walked away from STANTA into the Lynford estate, past calm, expansive lakes and into the heart of Lynford Arboretum. Most of my walks are undertaken on weekdays, when I have footpaths largely to myself. This was a Saturday morning, and it seemed that every dog in Thetford was being taken for a walk.

Stephens Lyne-Stephens, who was apparently the richest commoner in England at the time, rebuilt Lynford Hall between 1857 and 1862. He was married to a French ballerina, Yolanda Duvernay, who had built in the grounds her own Chapel of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen, Lynford. It is well-hidden in the trees, which, it is claimed, was an intentional act by a subsequent anti-Catholic owner of the hall.

It is not entirely isolated. There is a house to the liturgical east of the chapel which looks all the world like a presbytery, although surely there was never a resident priest here. For the second time in two days I was in a redundant church dedicated to Our Lady at noon. I prayed the Angelus in front of the statue of ‘ND du Sacre Coeur’ – Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. I wonder if Madame had it brought here from home.

I headed west through woodland – these are the northern parts of Thetford Forest – back towards the main road and into the village of Mundford. The centre of the village is picturesque and historic. Charming buildings, including a pub and a Methodist chapel (active), huddle round the triangular village green.

The church sits apart from the village centre. This is by no means unusual in Norfolk. The difference here is that the overspill from Thetford means that the land between the village centre and the church, and indeed all around the churchyard, has been infilled by modern housing – mostly bungalows and chalets.

I recall seeing inside St Leonard, Mundford, with its curious saddleback tower and spirelet, in the late 1990s. It was possibly on a bellringing trip. I have a vivid memory of climbing onto Ninian Comper’s rood loft, where the organ is. On both of subsequent visits, over a decade apart, it has been locked with no indication of a keyholder. As I have written before, there may be many very valid reasons why a church isn’t open for visitors and pilgrims. Nonetheless, in a county in which so many churches are open against the odds, it seems particularly sad that this one, surrounded by houses and people, isn’t.

The final leg of my journey took me alongside the A1065, a road I know only too well as a motorist, and back along the lane to my starting-point at Ickburgh.

I returned to London with 28 miles under my feet. I had made pilgrimage to thirteen churches plus a ruin. Of those thirteen, ten were open on arrival, and two were fortuitously (providentially?) opened for me. Lest it ever appear I take open churches for granted, let me say how thankful I am that these houses of prayer are freely available to the wandering pilgrim. It is an immense blessing.

That thankfulness been brought into focus on my return to my own parish of St Paul, Winchmore Hill. We’ve been having some troubles with our 1820s lath and plaster ceiling over the last few months, and our architect has now said we need to close the church until a more detailed inspection and temporary repairs of the ceiling have taken place. (I’ve had a lot on my plate; hence it taking a few days to write this.) We now face at least several Sundays worshipping in the church hall (thank God we have one), and a staggering hit on our finances. It is a reminder not to take for granted the open church. It often comes at a cost – financial and otherwise – to those who care for it.

Walk: 5½ miles https://explore.osmaps.com/route/29143461/lynford-3-churches