St Mary, Marlingford

Tucked away in a fold of central Norfolk is this small, pretty church, set on the edge of the park of the 19th Century Marlingford Hall, which stands grandly nearby. The north aisle with its separate steeply pitched roof and curious arrangement of windows at the east end looks all of its 1880s date, and creates the sense of a sprawling building, but in fact the chancel to the south-east of it is unusually long and narrow for a church of its size. Incidentally, Pevsner dates the rebuilding of the chancel to 1816. Can that really be right? The east window tracery and the blank window on the north side make it seem unlikely. Perhaps it is a misprint for 1861. The tower is pretty much all 14th Century, except for the curious reworking of the bell windows, and the Norman south doorway shows that the tower was built against an older church.

You step into a space which is entirely of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and its size, shape and furnishings create an inevitable crowded feeling which is not inappropriate for a small rural church. The arcade appears to be medieval, suggesting that the aisle was a rebuilding.

The glass on the south side of the chancel to members of the Fletcher family depicts the allegorical figures of Faith, Hope and Charity, and is by Powell & Sons using designs by Henry Holiday. It is in their typical early 20th Century style. They commemorate Henry Travers Fletcher who lost his life in the accident to Submarine A8. This vessel was accidentally submerged with its hatch open in Plymouth Sound in 1905 with the loss of fifteen lives. The glass of Hope was dedicated by his brother sub-lieutenants, the other two figures by his family.

The chancel retains a large ledger stone to Richard Clarke, Generosus, Medicus et Pharmacopeus ('gentleman, physician and chemist') who, the inscription tells us, was a friend of the more famous Thomas Brown of Norwich. His heraldic device must be one of the most deeply cut in Norfolk. Three other 18th Century memorials catch the eye as being of note. All three remember men with splendid names. On the south nave wall is a large ledger stone, which must have once been set in the floor, to Ceasar Life. Across the nave is Humphrey Rant and between the two is the most impressive monument of the three, and also the earliest, to Nathaniel Life, his memorial noted by Pevsner for its use of a broken column before a pyramid.

Marlingford also retains one of those printed, hand-coloured commandment boards you very occasionally come across in rural churches. The tablets of stone are shown at the centre, with Aaron, Moses and Joshua leaning on them protectively at the top. Henry Munro Cautley notes wistfully in his1940s survey of the churches of Norfolk and Suffolk that these had been very common in the days of his youth, but that even by the time of his writing they had nearly all disappeared. Eighty years on, this is an even rarer survival.

In the churchyard lies Joseph Waters, who was paralyzed and who died from cold and exposure in 1869. Such things must have been common in those days, and the poor of any parish were soon forgotten after death. But some kind soul here thought that it should be remembered, and ensured that he had a headstone of his own just to the west of the church.

Simon Knott, August 2021

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