St Andrew, Attlebridge

This church was once a familiar sight to travellers on the Norwich to Fakenham road, but the village is now thankfully bypassed, and this little church sits proudly on its mound in the centre. As Pevsner observed, there is a difficulty in dating the tower. It certainly looks older than the bequest towards it of 1439. Perhaps, as he suggests, this was towards the parapet at the top. The nave and chancel appear to be from the start of the 14th Century as is common around here. In the porch there's a curiosity, for reset in a niche on the west side of the door there's a piece of ornate late medieval masonry with a relief of a cleric kneeling before a female saint. It was found in the River Wensum nearby in the 1990s during work on the new bypass, and the shape suggests that it may well be from the parapet of a medieval bridge.

As at neighbouring Alderford, this is a small church, and its nave and chancel are in proportion long and narrow. The roofs must once have been continuous, but the walls of the nave were raised in the 15th Century and tall Perpendicular windows were inserted, which somewhat overwhelm the little church externally, but provide plenty of light within. An aisle hidden away on the north side completes the picture. The church must still have been relatively new when the linenfold door was installed, and you step through it into the west end of the nave. Over-restored interior was Pevsner's summation, and perhaps this is not unfair, though the church retains a rustic charm and at this distance tells us as much about the 19th Century as it does about earlier ones. This sounds an obvious thing to say, but so many 19th Century restorations of country churches turned them into anonymous, urban spaces that might as well be in Birmingham or Calcutta. That did not happen here, and it is still quite easy to imagine the ploughboy and the wheelwright sitting on the benches in their best clothes for the Sunday afternoon sermon.

The font came with the 1860s restoration, and since my last visit in 2005 there is another more elegant font up by the chancel arch. It would be interesting to know where it came from. Beside it there's an impressive prayer desk with turned balusters that seem to be 17th Century. There are few reminders of the church's medieval past, but tucked away in front of the south end of the communion rails is a fine chalice brass of 1525 for George Conyngham, who was vicar here towards the end of the medieval period. Chalice brasses depict a chalice and host, and sometimes a pair of hands holding it up. They remember priests, and they were a fashion at the start of the 16th Century. About thirty of them survive in East Anglia.

Simon Knott, September 2022

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