Flitcham is a pretty little village on the edge of the Sandringham estate, just to the north of the road from Kings Lynn to Fakenham. It is one of the area's larger settlements, and its church would at one time have been the largest church, for this was a 12th Century cruciform church with a central tower. The tower still stands proud, convincingly Norman in its lower stages, bearing the scars and marks of the structures that once huddled around it but which have since disappeared. There was a considerable rebuilding of the nave, south transept and the upper part of the tower here in the early 14th Century, and the roofless ruin of the that new south transept survives. The south aisle came about a century later, although there was a considerable structural restoration in the early 1880s. The north transept has gone completely, as has the chancel. This places the tower at the east end, as at the similarly denuded St Mary, Attleborough.

Nottingham University's splendid and generally reliable Key to English Place Names tells us that a flitch is a side of bacon, which is certainly true, even if it does seem a little unlikely in a place name. More romantically, there is a popular local theory that Flitcham is Felix-ham, the place where St Felix established his monastery after landing at Babingley and making his way up the creek, which if equally unlikely might even explain why this great church was erected here half a millennium later. This is not to be confused with the 13th Century Flitcham Priory, a community of Augustinians attached to the priory at Walsingham, which was a short distance from the church.

You step into a nave which, despite the unusual development of the building, is not unfamiliar. This is a quiet, welcoming space, full of light thanks to the clerestory and a lack of coloured glass, and attractive in its simplicity. The great Norman chancel arch was of course originally the tower arch, and the former chancel arch beyond it now forms the east window. The new sanctuary is set within what was the crossing under the tower. As with a number of churches in the Sandringham area, Edward VII was directly involved in the early 20th Century restoration and reordering here. When Sandringham church was largely rebuilt and refurnished in 1907 a number of the furnishings came to Flitcham, including the 1880s font, the benches and the curious angels that flank the east end of the nave, holding the words of the Tractarian hymn Crown Him with Many Crowns.

Something of the mood of this parish in the 17th Century, and of much of the Church of England in general at that time, might be gauged from two inscriptions, both set in the floor. Edward Runthwitt died in 1614 at the age of 82, and his brass plaque tells us that his body is returned to earth from whence it came and his soule into the handes of God whoe gave it. Nearby, a ledger stone inscription tells us that Sub hoc lapide positum est corpus Francisci Bendysh Generosi, 'Beneath this stone is laid the body of Francis Bendysh, Gentleman'. Bendysh died at the age of 63 in 1647, in the last years of the English Civil War, and his sympathies might be adjudged from the date of his death being given as Anno Salutis, 'in the Year of Salvation', a popular alternative among puritans at this time to the more familiar Anno Domini, 'in the Year of our Lord'. Bendysh's inscription concludes that plurimus quondam oppressus iam aerumnis oppressionibus malis omnibus dormit securus beatissiman expectans Resurrectionem, 'once much oppressed by hardships and the oppressions of all evils, he sleeps secure and blissfully awaiting the Resurrection'.

On the day of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, this parish church and nearby Flitcham Primitive Methodist Chapel both attracted attendances of a little over a hundred, which was pretty good going in a parish of fewer than five hundred people. Interestingly, both the churches ran schools, and you can't help thinking that there would have been considerable rivalry between the two rather than a spirit of co-operation. In general, Methodism was more popular in west Norfolk than the Established Church, but the later 19th Century and early 20th Century would transform the fortunes of both.

Simon Knott, April 2023

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