All Saints, Beighton

This loveable old curiosity of a church sits not far from the Halvergate marshes, just to the west of Wickhampton. Externally it looks a bit of a mixture, but it was probably all from the 14th Century. The tower came first, and curiously has buttresses which are now inside the nave, which is large and aisled. The substantial 1880s restoration was by the young Norwich architect AS Hewitt who would go on to be better known for his work on public buildings. His is the tower top, and he replaced all the window tracery and roofs, although probably along the original lines. The nave is thatched, creating a kind of cottage effect over the windows of the clerestories. In fact, the nave is pretty much all Hewitt's as he also resurfaced the walls, but the nave still has a more rugged appearance.

You step down into a pleasingly rustic interior, again pretty much all Hewitt's work but with an atmosphere of the ages. A few old benches survive, among their bench ends a pelican in her piety, but the most memorable of the bench ends are from the late 19th Century restoration. They include a sow feeding her piglets at the west end of the north aisle.

No expense was spared when it came to the glass at Beighton. The chancel has two sequences of saints by William Warrington, that to the north earlier than the windows on the south side, creating a jewel-like glow full of Victorian High Church confidence. But best of all is the 1840s decorative glass in the south aisle by John Middleton of St Stephen's Street, Norwich. Leaded patterns swirl around the jewels of colour. This is some of the earliest glass of its kind in England, as leadworkers and glaziers responded to the new demand for coloured glass in churches. Very quickly they would be overtaken by the major workshops mass-producing figurative glass, but for about thirty years in the first half of the century there was a remarkable renaissance in artisanal glass, with Middleton albeit a minor figure, but one not to be forgotten.

Simon Knott, August 2022

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