St Mary, Itteringham

Itteringham is a pleasant, scattered village that straddles the young River Bure in the low hills north-east of Aylsham, joined to the modern world by threads of narrow lanes. Its church sits on a rise to the north of the village, keeping an eye on it, and like many of Norfolk's smaller churches it is principally the work of the early 14th Century with a considerable makeover in the 19th Century. A curiosity is a 15th Century chapel forming a transept on the north side. It is in ruins, and is now home to a pink granite memorial to Emily Jane Walpole who died in 1888. She was the daughter of the Reverend Robert Walpole, and the Walpole name is writ large here because the family home was at Mannington Hall, within Itteringham parish. They also give their name to the village pub.

When I came back here in the autumn of 2022 I'm afraid that I found the church locked, although I'm sure there must have been a good reason for that, for on my previous visit back in 2005 I'd found it a light, welcoming space, neatly-kept and obviously well-used and loved. The photographs at the bottom of this page are those taken on that occasion. An oddity is that the box pews appear to have been built around poppy-headed benches, although I do not think the benches can be old. The glass includes two figures that Birkin Haward thought might be the obscure workshop of William Miller whose only other glass in East Anglia is at Thornham Magna in Suffolk. The decorative glass here is probably all by J&J King of Norwich. It's fairly early, and the royal arms of William IV dated 1833 were probably also part of a similar attempt to beautify the church at that time.

St Mary is perhaps not a church of outstanding interest, and when exploring the hundreds of churches in Norfolk there is always the danger that it can sometimes result in cherry-picking, for the crop is so abundant, and often we only pay regard to the fuller and more beautiful examples. But of course each one is the individual and unique heart of a historic community, and most are the focus of a faith community today.

Simon Knott, November 2022

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