|
|
St John
the Baptist, Coltishall
 |
|
Coltishall
is a busy little town, a large village really, on
the edge of the Broads. For many years it was the
nearest shopping centre for the large RAF base to
the north, but this has now closed. There was a
suggestion that the old base might be used for
one of the government's planned eco-towns; this
is now unlikely to happen, but in any case
Coltishall feels no less busy than it did when
the base was open, and with its southern suburb
Horstead is still a mecca for traffic, both on
the roads and for the more gently-paced vehicles
on the River Bure. The large riverside pub on
the east side of the village is a popular
stop-off for boats on the Broads, and at any time
of the year Coltishall has the feel of a place
where people live and work. Less frenetic and
more attractive than nearby Hoveton and Wroxham,
it is still an ordinary place, and I like it for
that.
|
Along the
road to Hoveton sits the tall and rather stark church of
St John the Baptist, the long lines of its continuous
nave and chancel softened by its roof of thatch. Take
away the late medieval tower and you can see at once that
this is an ancient building, almost entirely a 13th
Century rebuilding of what was a Norman, and possibly
even Anglo-Saxon structure. The two round openings in the
northern wall certainly look like Anglo-Saxon windows,
although as Dr Pevsner notes they are curiously high. The
north side of the church is close to the road, but it
hides the delight of a huge, gently sloping graveyard on
the south side. Here, in the sunshine of late autumn, I
was intrigued to find a fairly primitively carved 18th
Century column with a hand holding a heart under a
shining cloud, which I took to be masonic symbolism.
For many
years, this church was kept locked, but it is now open to
visitors every day. You enter it, unusually in East
Anglia, from the west, stepping down into a large, light
interior. A south aisle, hidden from the road, creates a
sense of space under the low ceiling, which might
otherwise be rather oppressive. The predominantly clear
glass allows the white walls and ceiling to glow.
What
glass there is is very good indeed. A Flemish
roundel, set in a strange 19th Century round
window probably intended to echo the Anglo-Saxon
openings, depicts the head of John the Baptist
being brought to Salome on a platter, and the
east window is a fine example of the work of
Powell & Sons. The only division between nave
and chancel is the screen, which is elegant but
rather over-restored. Looking back west, a neat
little 17th Century gallery is shoe-horned into
the space beneath the tower, an enchanting
detail. Three decades in the early 18th
Century brought three rather grand memorials, a
reminder that Coltishall was an extremely wealthy
little town in those days. Its main industries
were malting and boat-building, for both of which
it was handily placed on the navigable stretch of
the Bure, but these fell away during the course
of the 19th Century. As Pevsner poignantly
observes, the last wherry was built in the
once-thriving Anchor Street boatyards in 1912 and
the last malthouse closed in 1927, and the rows
of once fashionable shops closed with them.
|
|
 |
|
|
|