All Saints, Freethorpe

There is something beguiling about this pretty round towered church just off the main road south through the Yare valley. Perhaps it is that little conical cap perched on the tower top, or the way this wide-aisled church seems to spread its wings on the ground. It looks thoroughly comfortable. We are used to seeing the round-towered churches in the little parishes of south-east Norfolk perched on rises in tightly bounded graveyards, but the churchyard at Freethorpe sprawls lazily, a wide open green velvet setting for such a pretty little jewel. The 12th Century tower is big and rugged, looking as if it could do double duty as a small fortress if called upon. The church against it was rebuilt in the late 13th Century, but then Anthony Salvin came along in the 1840s at the behest of Richard Henry Vade Walpole who, as his memorial reminds us, was impropriator of the great tithes and Lord of the Manor of Freethorpe. Salvin rebuilt the aisles on a wider and grander scale in proportion to the nave, the nave roof flowing neatly in one go over them.

Salvin's is the interior, a pleasing early High Victorian church of polished wood and tiling. There's nothing old in the furnishings. Glass by Thomas Willement depicts the Walpole arms under RIchard's VW (Vade Walpole) monogram and above an inscription reading This church was restored in the year of Our Lord MCCCXLIX. A small north transept off of the chancel may have been intended by Salvin as an organ chamber. Pevsner thought it was built as the Walpole family pew (not likely in a chancel in the 1840s, surely?), but in any case it now serves as as a setting for impressive glass of the 1880s depicting the arms of Walpole impaling those of Duncombe. This remembers the marriage of Richard Henry Vade Walpole and Harriet Duncombe, which their memorial in the chancel records as having happened on 20th February 1834. Harriet died in 1882 and this glass must date from then, and was probably made by Clayton & Bell. Was the intention to repurpose the organ chamber as a memorial chapel, which may explain Pevsner's impression?

In the north aisle is a memorial to Edward Walpole of Savile Row in the County of Middlesex. Edward died in 1844 and was buried in the cemetery at Kensal Green, London. His inscription goes on to tell us that he was the grandson of Horatio, the first Lord Walpole of Wolterton. His bust sits on top, and the church it looks out on today is neat and warm, the low roofs and square space of the nave and aisles giving it a cosy intimacy. Everything is of a piece. I remember coming this way once with the late Tom Muckley, and he thought the chancel sanctuary properly Anglican, a perfect little space which was seemly and fitting for its purpose.

Simon Knott, August 2022

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