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St Mary
and All Saints, Little Melton
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This
delicious little church sits to the west of its
otherwise rather suburban village in a pretty
graveyard along a narrow lane. We came here hot
foot from Norwich station, and it was just after
nine o'clock on a winter morning. The trees
dripped as the night's frost melted, and I
stooped to pick up the poppy wreath which had
been blown off of the war memorial on the gate.
The air was still now, and all there was to hear
was the chatter of starlings picking over the
path. It did not seem that we were barely seven
miles from the centre of Norwich. St Mary is
small, but everything is in place. The graveyard
is small too, as if this was a church in a
children's story. The
clear glass in almost all the windows means that
you can see right through the church.
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Almost
everything about St Mary predates the Black Death; very
unusual in East Anglia where we were enthusiastic
rebuilders in the late 14th and 15th centuries. The
Victorians redid the roofs, but otherwise the church
retains its little aisles with their lancets and
delectable Decorated windows. Externally, it is a thing
of beauty, and once you have tracked down a keyholder
(like many churches this close to Norwich, it is kept
locked) you will find that the inside is similarly
lovely.
Many
predominantly Decorated buildings that have not been
enhanced with the crispness of Perpendicular have an
endearingly shabby feel to them, but that is not the case
here. St Mary is clean and full of light, the creamy
walls and mellow wood of the furniture creating a sense
that is devotional and welcoming.
And
on those creamy walls are some marvellous
survivals, for St Mary has some fascinating early
14th century wallpaintings, almost certainly
dating from the time when the church was built. The most
interesting is on the north arcade wall (there is
no clerestory) and it is part of a Warning
against Gossip. These instructional paintings
depict a group of women neglecting their rosaries
to gossip about their neighbours. Meanwhile, a
number of devils listen in, writing down what
they say; the notes, no doubt, to be used in
evidence against them on the day of judgement.
The women here are seated at a bench, the fine
lines of their clothes still perfectly sharp
after six hundred years. You can see it at the
start of this article - click on it to enlarge
it. There is another good one at Seething, a few
miles away.
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There is a
St Christopher further west on the arcade, but only the
lower half survives. More paintings can be seen in the
north aisle, but probably the best is the Annunciation in
the chancel, with Gabriel and Mary either side of the
east window - thank goodness the Victorians did not
replace it with a larger one! Gabriel's wings appear to
be made of peacock feathers; Mary touches her heart as
the dove descends.
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This is one of those
churches that is enjotable as a whole, and apart
from the wall paintings there is no single
outstanding feature. However, everything is so
pleasing that it is worth noting some of them.
The Purbeck marble font, for instance, is no
different to hundreds of others in East Anglia,
but here it is set on elegant collonettes, and
under a dome-like painted cover. The two
surviving seats in the sedilia echo the double
piscina, all surviving from the original building
of the church, and there is a large, later
piscina set in the extreme east of the north
arcade, which I think may have been reset there,
possibly in place of an image niche. The screen is contemporary with it,
painted at the bottom and with complex panel
tracery above creating a sense of mystery - their
darkness seems to float above the chancel like a
cloud. The screen seems complete, and so the
panels in the pulpit and in the front of the
stalls probably came from the roodloft.
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