All Saints, Helhoughton

Helhoughton, at one time Hale Houghton to distinguish it from the other three Houghtons in the area, sits on the northern side of the Raynham Hall estate forming a group with East Raynham, South Raynham and West Raynham. Helhoughton's church is a long and low construction typical of the 14th Century and similar to a number of others out this way, but the nave has rather a forbidding, fortress-like exterior thanks to a substantial rebuild in the late 18th Century. The aisles were demolished and the walls rebuilt, the windows replaced in the same Y-tracery style but out of wood. The flat-roofed tower is odd, its belfry removed and the bells hung lower. The chancel was truncated, the east wall being moved back, and all in all the idea seems to have been to make the church smaller, more manageable and more suitable for prayerbook worship. As Pevsner observed, the restoration of 1890 effaced any Georgian character one might have enjoyed.

You enter from the west, the rebuilding having dispensed with the south and north entrances. The immediate effect is of entering a tunnel, its width accentuated by a low ceiling with spotlighting in it, apparently the result of a major makeover in the late 1980s partly carried out as a community project by a team from the Manpower Services Commission. Fortunately the clear glass in the windows prevents any gloom or sense of constraint. When Sam Mortlock came this way in the early 1980s he found the interior in a bit of a state, so the refurbishment was obviously necessary, and today the interior is spotless and rather lovely. The Norman font is set on four columns and a heavy base, a curiosity, and the brick floors spread all around.

The chancel contains two items of great interest. Two hands hold a heart on the 1440 brass memorial to William Stapleton and his wife, with an inscription below and prayer scrolls leading off from the heart. It is an unusually complete example. Above it is one of the best sets of James I royal arms in the county. The arms have been relettered for Queen Anne and dated 1705, but they actually come from a century earlier, and still bear one of James I's mottoes, Exurgat Deus et Dissipentur Inimici ('Rise up o God and scatter my enemies'), a satisfying Latin tag to recite under your breath in the middle of a difficult day.

Simon Knott, October 2021

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