Holy Innocents, Foulsham

In this area of small, scattered parishes with little churches, Foulsham comes as a surprise, for is a big, handsome village, and its church is large and rather grand. The place takes its character from the events of June 15th 1770, when a store of gunpowder exploded and a massive fire destroyed both sides of the market place. All that survives of this time is the church, for the tower and the walls were left standing. The west end of the church faces the street, but set back behind a wide and fairly empty churchyard. This makes the tower seem more imposing than it already is, at some 30m high, and can be seen for miles across the open countryside. It seems to have been built in one campaign judging by a number of bequests in the late 1470s and early 1480s. Of the church beyond, the north aisle preceded the tower and the south aisle came after it, perhaps as late as 1520. Clerestories rise above both sides. The chancel is broadly 14th Century in construction, but a restoration of the 1880s rebuilt the east wall and window.

Unusually in East Anglia you enter the church from the west, and so the interior unfolds before you. If you have spent time before getting here visiting the small churches in the villages round about, the effect is doubly impressive. The aisles are like mighty wings, but the biggest surprise comes when you look up at the nave roof, because when it was rebuilt after the fire it was covered by a ceiling, as if this was the dance hall of an 18th Century spa. This ceiling was in poor condition when I visited in 2005, but in recent years has undergone an impressive restoration. Inevitably, few old furnishings have survived the vicissitudes of the last few centuries. Cautley thought the font was early 16th Century, but it was not in the church in the 1840s and the evidence seems to show that it is a good copy installed at the time of the 1880s restoration.

Up in the chancel there are some fragments of 15th Century glass, mostly heads,arranged in what appear to be geometric patterns as much as anything else. The wooden furnishings and panels of the sanctuary are attractive, and up on the wall is an imposing memorial of 1616 to Thomas Hunt and his three wives (not all at the same time of course). They kneel behind him and pleasingly are all dressed slightly differently. The memorial is in poor condition with one of the tablets and one of the top finials missing. Was this damage from the explosion and fire, perhaps? A tender little brass inscription to Richard Fenn, who died in 1565, records that Of all I had, this only now I have, Nyne akers, wch unto ye poore I gave. Outside, a tomb chest to the north-west of the tower has late 15th Century panelling with crowned letters that Mortlock identified as referring to Robert Colles and Cecily his wife. They were among the donors to the tower.

Simon Knott, May 2022

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