St Andrew, Holt

Holt is perhaps the most attractive of Norfolk's smaller towns, and it has the feel of a more significant place than its population of just under four thousand might suggest. This is partly due to the fire of 1707 which destroyed much of the medieval town centre, but which has left it with the happy circumstance of a number of imposing Georgian buildings built as replacements for those lost in the fire. The church itself was gutted, but the remains of the old structure were restored rather than being replaced. It sits hidden down a narrow street away from the market place with, as Pevsner observes, no part to play in the image of the town. It had been rebuilt in the 14th Century and further elaborated in the 15th Century. The first restoration after the fire was in 1727 which Pevsner describes as feeble, excusing William Butterfield's considerable restoration in two phases in the 1860s.

You approach the church up a long path from the west, the tower before you. The body of the church emerges from behind it, beyond the avenue of trees, as you come closer. The views from the wider churchyard beyond are, as Pevsner notes, decidedly rural, but when you step through the west doorway and then through the modern glass doors there is no doubt that the church you are entering is an urban one, broad, well-kept and full of light. The low arcades hunch beneath the large clerestory windows, making the aisles seem wider than they are, and the perspective making the chancel seem distant, although this is by no means a large church. The font at the west end is unusual, a circular bowl of the late 12th Century and therefore a survival of the earlier church which the 14th Century rebuilding replaced. Turning east, the church has a memorable collection of early 20th Century glass, much the work of Herbert Bryans with his running dog maker's mark. Bryans had worked for Charles Kempe & Co in the last decades of the previous century and obviously contributed to that firm's distinctive house style, for his independent work seems often nowadays to be erroneously credited to his former master.

The east window of 1910 is a collaboration with another former Kempe artist, Ernest Heasman, depicting the Crucifixion flanked by St Paul, the Blessed Virgin, St Thomas and St Nicholas. Their east window at Redenhall on the other side of Norfolk is similar. Herbert Bryans' too are the angel at the empty tomb of 1905, the war memorial glass depicting the Blessed Virgin flanked by St Martin and St George of 1920, and, best of all, the Adoration of the Shepherds of 1914 at the east end of the south aisle. At the other end of that aisle, Francis Spear's glass of 1933 of the pilgrims making their way to Canterbury is delightful. The window of 1906 depicting St Felix, St Fursey and St Juliana is by Powell & Sons. This is a curious design, because although St Felix and St Fursey are East Anglian saints, St Juliana was an early Greek martyr in the Diocletian persecution. However, this Juliana is depicted as a Benedictine nun, and so almost certainly it was intended to be Julian of Norwich, never canonised and taking her name from the dedication of the church where she was an anchoress.

Memorials include one to Edmund Newdigate of the 1780s, detailing his work as a physician in Ipswich, and of a century earlier that to Edmond Hobart, which tells us that during the Commonwealth he escaped the malice of the Usurper, and his steadfast loyalty carried him through the storms of unnatural rebellion. The small chapel that opens off of the chancel into the south aisle was built as an organ chamber. The organ is no longer here, but the young Benjamin Britten used to practice on it. He was a pupil at Greshams, a public school here in Holt. One of his near-contemporaries was the poet WH Auden, who was six years older. Auden later became a friend to the young Britten and wrote the libretto of his first opera, Paul Bunyan, although they were later estranged, as often seems to have happened with Britten's collaborators. Auden, accused in the press in the late 1930s of knowing nothing about fascism when he went into exile in the United States, retorted "On the contrary, at school I lived for years under a fascist regime." Auden's main complaint about Greshams was that boys were warmly rewarded for informing on any hints of physical intimacy in the friendships of others, which would then be beaten out of them. One suspects that Auden had more reason to resent this practice than Britten, who was rather circumspect about his homosexuality.

Simon Knott, May 2022

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