home I index I latest I glossary I introductions I e-mail I about this site
St George, Hardingham
Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.
St George, Hardingham I remember it now: it was the summer of 2007. The previous year had been the hottest of the century so far, but this summer was one of the wettest. And when it wasn't raining the day after day of low, miserable cloud was enough to make the spirit heavy. And then, at last, the day came when the clouds boiled and parted, and my heart was lifted by the brilliance of the blue and the heat of the sun on my face. Looking back, I'm sure that I appreciated it all th emore for having to wait for it. That heat, along with all the water, conspired to make East Anglia the greenest I had ever seen it. And the churchyards! Those which had missed their late-May mowing because of the storms were now jungles, the churches like lost cities. But Hardingham wasn't like that. We had come here first thing, just after eight o'clock in the morning on a day that could have gone either way at that point. But this wouldn't have mattered, because in any weather St George is magnificent, a great church on a hill, with only the old rectory for company. And despite the weeks of bad weather, despite the lonely setting, the churchyard here was immaculate, just coming out of its spring tidy-up and beginning to burgeon again. The large sloping verge below the graveyard wall was trimmed like a bowling green. We had come to St George not expecting to get in, but there was now a keyholder notice, and a charming keyholder. The key was at the Old Rectory, and as I walked along the gravel path past the croquet lawn I felt as if I was stepping into an LP Hartley novel. It could have been any time. I came back to Hardingham on my own
some six years later. Now, it was late October, but the
approach to the church still appeared trim and tidy,
though the churchyard itself was now frayed and tussocky
as the world began to put itself to bed for another
winter. St George is one of nine Norfolk churches with a
tower on the south side instead of at the west end. Most
of them are in this part of the county. Because of this,
you can clearly see from the juxtaposition between the
tower arch and the south doorway that a tower was built
on to what was obviously a church of the 13th Century,
adding a note of ruggedness to the setting. You step into
what is a strikingly large nave. There is a transept off
on the north side, and the weeping chancel is nearly as
long again as the nave. In the silence there is a feeling
of vastness, of emptiness. This interior is substantially
the work of the Victorians, but what I will always
remember at Hardingham is the work of the century after,
for the west end of the nave is given up to the memory of
the First World War and how it touched a remote Norfolk
parish. Below the memorial board is a brass shell case converted into a vase and home to four Remembrance Day poppies. It is inscribed FROM HIGH WOOD AUG 1916, and I wondered if this has any particular significance. It didn't take me long to find out. A stroll up to the chancel completes the story, for there, on a brass plaque is the agonising coda. Walley was the only son of Stephen Cawley Walley, Rector of this Parish, and Mercy, his wife. The boy was killed in the Battle of the Somme at High Wood on the 20th August 1916, and his body is buried in Dernancourt cemetery to the south of Albert, which I remembered driving past a few months before I first visited Hardingham. He was 24 years old. Walley senior must have been given the shell case from the battle where his son was killed, had it engraved, and set it in his church. More than a century later it is still there. It struck me then that this great silent, empty space was still resonant with the grief of those days. As with any medieval church there are older survivals, of course: the elaborate piscina lodged in the south-east corner of the sanctuary, its arch intersected by two other arches, typical of the 13th Century. There are other piscinas in the nave, and a curious alcove which may have been a memorial, with two raised gothic crosses set inside it. This must have been a busy place in Catholic days. The elegant, venerable, broken font of that time also survives, though only just, and the George III royal arms above the north doorway speaks of a time in between. Death, or at least the memory of
it, touched this parish enthusiastically in the late 17th
century, with half a dozen ledger stones in the chancel
recalling those times. The inscriptions are austere,
terse: Ann the Wife of Thomas Grigson died the 28th
day of June 1666 reads one, and that is all. Another
is ameliorated by a roccoco branch beneath an inscription
partly in Latin and entirely secular. I am always struck
by the contrast between the terrifying simplicity of
these 17th Century memorials and the more understandable
and graspable sentimentality of two centuries later. In
the north wall, Major William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards VC
is remembered. He won the Victoria Cross at Tel-el-Kebir
during the Egyptian war of 1882, and died thirty years
later just before the start of the conflict which left
its heavy mark on this small community. Presumably, he
would have know the young Geoffrey Stephen Walley. Simon Knott, November 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter. |
Amazon commission helps cover the running costs of this site.
home I index I latest I introductions I e-mail I about
this site I glossary
Norwich I ruined churches I desktop backgrounds I round tower churches
links I small
print I www.simonknott.co.uk I www.suffolkchurches.co.uk