The River Waveney creates a peninsula inland from Lowestoft, occupied by the villages of Aldeby, Wheatacre and Burgh St Peter.
My walk started at St Mary, Aldeby. This would be a cruciform church if it were not missing its north transept. In fact, the north side of the church’s curtilage is entirely inaccessible. The boundary with Priory Farm is flush with the church, meaning this is a rare example of a country church you can’t walk round. The farm sits were there would have been a Benedictine Priory in the Middle Ages.
This was the first village church to which I could not gain access. I telephoned the number in the porch only to discover that the church is open every day of the week except Monday. I am visiting too many churches in these three months to check churches are open in advance, so disappointment is inevitable. But at least Aldeby is open six days of the week. That’s six (or even seven) days more than some.
Less than a mile away is All Saints, Wheatacre, with its chequerboard brick and flint tower. The interior is intriguing. In the early sixteenth century the nave was rebuilt and enlarged. A new chancel arch was constructed in readiness for a similarly enlarged chancel, which never materialised.
I ate my picnic in the churchyard, from which I got my first sense of being in marshland, spreading out to the north of the church.
I headed east. I should be running a competition of comedy street names. ‘Crimp Cramp Lane’ is right up there. There’s an old Primitive Methodist Chapel in Burgh St Peter (1864), now the village hall. But the goal of my visit to this secluded part of the county was the village’s parish church, which lays two miles beyond the concentration of cottages around the stump of a the windmill.
At the point of the peninsula, with nothing but marsh, dyke and broad between it and Lowestoft, is the curious church of St Mary, Burgh St Peter, and its Ziggurat tower.
From 1764 to 1899 Burgh St Peter had five different rectors, all from the Boycatt/Boycott family, who left an indelible mark on its church. In 1795 the tower fell down (obviously, this is Norfolk), and the Rector’s son, William Boycatt, designed its replacement based on pyramids he had seen on his tour of Mesopotamia. The resulting tower-cum-mausoleum is extraordinary.
But this church isn’t just about the tower. The nave and chancel are one long narrow continuous space, which suggests there was a Saxon church on this site as early as 700AD. The wild, isolated setting put me in mind of St Peter’s Chapel in Bradwell-on-Sea, where St Cedd landed just fifty years earlier. I love churches which are old enough that they have been in use for most of Christian history. It’s a glorious inheritance of prayer.
Inside there is a pulpit also erected by the Boycotts. While less ostentatious, it is plastered with memorial plaques to family members. The last Boycott incumbent was succeeded by the Anglo-Catholic, Leeding, who not only restored the church, but also opened a mission chapel in the parish, as well as a chapel in the Rectory. (Which, by the way, was also built by the Boycotts, and is sumptuous.) This corner of Norfolk, as far as it is possible to get from Walsingham, seems an odd place for the Catholic movement in the Church of England to be brought. It's left some fine textiles.
The Boycotts aren't just a memory here. Descendants of the family still act as patron of the living. (Although, if patronage is exercised in turn, they only appoint one in every fourteen incumbents.) Another Boycott's brush with Irish politics in the nineteenth century gave the English language a new word.
To make this a circular walk, I returned the ‘long’ way alongside Wheatacre Marshes. I glimpsed the spire of St Margaret’s, Lowestoft behind me. There is little evidence of human activity or infrastructure in this sparsely populated area. Every now and again I would hear, then see, a train seemingly glide along Somerleyton Marshes the other side of the Waveney.
Two things slightly spoiled this walk.
Firstly, farmers round here are clearly not very walker-friendly. Footpaths were generally inaccessible, or involved poorly-signed diversions. Twice I had to go round several farm buildings to try to find the continuation of a path, both times to no avail, meaning either double-backing on myself, or taking an unauthorised route. Twice too I needed to walk across crops where a path was clearly signed. Once I had to climb through a barbed-wire fence. The vast majority of landowners and farmers make walking a pleasure. It’s shame when some don’t.
And secondly, this was the first of my walks without any conversation. I exchanged ‘hellos’ with a man cleaning his car, and a builder in someone’s driveway. I didn’t see a single other person walking, or visiting the churches. Even passing vehicles were few and far between. The dominant population in these lush pastures is grazing cattle.
I am glad the sun shone for this walk. This might be a lonely place in less clement weather.
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