Ashill is a busy village to the north of Watton. We came back here in July 2022, a week after the hottest day ever recorded. A field fire had spread into the centre of the village, destroying a dozen houses by the village green. No one was killed, but passing them was to see an unfamiliar sight in East Anglia, both raw and shocking. It looked like a war zone. We travelled on in silence to the sprawling parish church, which sits in a fairly narrow churchyard at a wide curve in the road to Watton. At first sight it seems a typical Norfolk mix of the 14th and 15th Centuries, but there was a considerable restoration here, and Pevsner thought that all of the window tracery was restored, which is to say it is of the 19th Century and tells us nothing about the building of the church. The tower is substantial but in proportion not a tall one, and so the overall effect is perhaps of a crisp building which squats comfortably, and which will seem larger inside than without. There's an elegant ogee-arched doorway to the west, familiar from nearby Carbrooke and Caston. The later two-storey south porch is a somewhat austere affair, tucked awkwardly into the west end of the south aisle. The aisle itself, and the clerestory, are not imposing.

You step into a church which, as at neighbouring Saham Toney, is almost entirely of its 19th Century restoration. Surprisingly there is no north aisle or clerestory, which accentuates the height of the nave and perhaps leaves the building feeling somewhat unfinished. This side contains the major medieval survival here, a sequence of 15th Century figures in glass. They appear to be the remains of two sets, the four Evangelists and the four Latin Doctors. All have had their heads replaced, though with medieval survivals, presumably from elsewhere. St Augustine and St Gregory have been given the heads of angels, St John a female head, St Mark a bearded head, and St Jerome the head of a helmeted knight. An AMR roundel also appears to be old.

The other glass in the church dates from the 1880s and later. Birkin Haward thought it was all by Lavers, Barraud and Westlake. When I first came here about twenty years ago there was a heavy curtain dividing off the chancel from the nave. This has now gone, and instead the mostly 19th Century rood screen has been fitted with sliding doors, which must be unique in East Anglia. Beyond, the chancel is now in use as a social space. The arcading either side of the east window appears to be 14th Century, as is the font at the other end of the church, perhaps part of the same campaign. A bearded head looks out from under one of the panels of the bowl. The royal arms appear to be painted carved wood or even cast iron, and are charged with the early 19th Century arms of George III. However, underneath a banner inscription reads tollemalos sacrane extolle pios cognosce legem consol disce mori te ipsum 1683, which means something like 'sanctify yourself, extol the pious, know the law, comfort yourself and learn how to die'. The date is odd as it appears to have no connection with the arms, but there is no other indication of its significance, and I don't see how the arms could have been altered or added to an earlier setting.

At the west end of the aisle is a Flanders cross, which originally stood above the grave of Machine Gun Officer Lieutenant KC Ford, who died of wounds received in Plogstrat Wood in December 1915. The cross would have been placed above his temporary grave while the battle continued around him - indeed, there is a large hole in the cross caused by shrapnel or a bullet. After the war, the bodies were exhumed and reburied in cemeteries under marble crosses. Often, the original wooden battlefield crosses were sent back to the dead soldiers' families, who usually passed them on to the parish church, and one survives here today.

Simon Knott, October 2022

Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.