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Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Erpingham
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Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Erpingham Erpingham is a largish village, and
one that is still getting larger if all the building work
I saw there in May 2021 is anything to go by. But the
church sits away from the village, down narrow,
doglegging lanes in this surprisingly rolling landscape.
A person in possession of a decent Ordnance Survey map is
never in want of knowing what the church tower in the
distance is, but in this part of East Anglia there are so
many grand medieval towers that it is still possible to
be confused. How helpful it is, then, to approach St Mary
and see the letters E R P I N G H A M interspersed with
Marian monograms around the parapet of the tower! This is
not a medieval attempt at a village sign, but a reminder
that the bequest of the 1480s which paid for the tower
came from a member of the Erpingham family. What a bold
tower this is, and how long and low the 14th Century nave
and 15th Century chancel seem, especially from the
aisleless north, without a clerestory. There is a
delightful Annunciation scene in little niches either
side of the west door. There was a major restoration of
1899, late enough to be sympathetic. The south aisle has one of Norfolk's best-known brasses, to Sir John de Erpingham who died in 1370. It dates from about half a century later, commissioned by his son Sir Thomas Erpingham who, as John Vigar reminds us in his book Norfolk Churches, was a hero of Agincourt. Sir John stands full armour and it is easy to imagine him clanking around bloodsoaked fields. There are scatterings of medieval glass, including a typical angel of the Norwich school with a modern face, the restoration work of King & Son. The east window is odd, an arrangement of 16th Century Flemish panels, or at least that is what they appear to be. In fact, they are modern copies of glass originally made for Steinfeld Abbey in Germany in the 1520s. The originals were donated to the church in 1955 by Blickling Hall, but then returned there in the 1990s, presumably at the request of the National Trust. They'd been bought for the Hall in the early 19th Century from the Norwich dealer JC Hampp. At the end of the south aisle a large traceried squint looks through into the sanctuary. The modern tabernacle, which in the Catholic tradition is usually immediately behind the altar, is offset to one side so that it aligns with this squint for anyone celebrating Mass at the side altar. Other curiosities include one of East Anglia's dozen or so sets of royal arms for Elizabeth II and a shrine to King Charles the Martyr. A lamp is suspended in front of his painted portrait, an inscription beneath . As you would expect, the modern glass is of a high quality. The figures of Mary Magdalene and the RIsen Christ in the garden are the 1860s work of Clayton & Bell, although as Birkin Haward noted they date from the time that the studio was shared with Heaton, Butler & Bayne, and Haward thought he detected the hand of Robert Bayne in their design. A lovely Arts and Crafts Blessed Virgin and child in the south aisle is unsigned, but is it possible that it is the design of Louis Davis, perhpas for Powell & Sons? A reminder of the modern tradition at Erpingham is in a number of memorial inscriptions in glass, and one in brass, for Father Samuel Harvard-Watts, incumbent here 1922 to 1944, who was presumably responsible for the church's character. It observes Tu es Sacerdos in Aeternum ('You are a Priest in all Eternity') and asks us to pray for his soul. Simon Knott, July 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter. |
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