St Mary, Bodney

This dear, sad little church sits on its own just off of the Mundford to Swaffham road, right beside the forbidden zone of the Battle Training Area. Its near neighbour Langford has been inaccessible to the public for more than half a century now. There is no village, and in terms of population this is one of East Anglia's smallest parishes. Although the windows were all renewed in the 19th Century, the tracery corresponds to earlier drawings. Most likely, this was a Norman single cell church in origin. Probably, there wasn't the money locally in later medieval times for a rebuilding, just enough to make the tracery briefly fashionable.

You step into an endearingly rural 19th Century restoration, which was done with a light hand. The benches have renewed bench ends but the surviving late-medieval traceried backs, a motif found in several churches around here. The font is a plain and simple one of the early 15th Century. Curiously, the space inside the church is divided by a proper chancel arch and a wall, despite the continuous roof. Along the nave walls are oil lamp holders. The pink banner, which was used to lead processions in the early years of the 20th Century, is embroidered with three simple primroses.

On a shelf sits a small, slightly battered plaster statue of the Blessed Virgin and Christ child, and it seems an appropriate single adornment to this quiet, empty little space. And St Mary would be a forgotten, endangered church if it were not for one simple fact: it is open every day. This transforms it from a dying church into one which is full of life and love, a wayside shrine for pilgrims and strangers. Wouldn't it be good if all tiny, obscure parish churches learned this lesson.

Simon Knott, December 2023

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