North of Swaffham, the landscape busies itself morphing from the Breckland into High Norfolk. The fields roll and climb, secretive woodlands lord it over the narrowing lanes, and the 21st Century begins to fall away. The villages turn in on themselves, quiet and introspective. However, coming up from South Pickenham a mile or so off, North Pickenham seems a sudden return to suburbia, a large comfortable village with a pub. Just behind it, the village church hides up a narrow alleyway and despite its size you might easily miss it. Two or three substantial houses keep the churchyard company, and the church itself looks all of its almost complete rebuild of the 1860s. In fact, much of the 14th century tower survives, but to all intents and purposes this is a Victorian church, to such an extent that Munro Cautley's great 1940s survey of the medieval churches of East Anglia did not even bother to mention it.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the church appears little-known, and it is one of the very few churches in this part of Norfolk which is kept locked without a keyholder notice. This has always been the case on my occasional visits. On one occasion a few years back I found the churchwarden's name on the noticeboard, but there was no address or telephone number. However, there was also also a list of the electoral roll, and by cross-referencing to this we found a house in the high street. As it turned out the churchwarden was very friendly, and happily gave us the key, and I wondered why there had been no proper notice, or why the church was not kept open. I commend this approach to you if you visit, but coming back in 2022 I remembered enough of what I had seen before, and I didn't feel the need to repeat the exercise.

But on that earlier occasion I stepped inside. While there is little evidence left of the medieval life of North Pickenham, this a good example of a quality Anglican parish church rebuild of the 1860s. The smell of polished wood, the clean surfaces everywhere, showed that it was loved and cared for today just as much as when it was built, although it is likely that the churchmanship has come down a peg or two since those days. In contrast with the rustic, pastoral church across the fields at South Pickenham, this is a church with an air of gravitas, of money well spent, a serious church on God's earth. Everything is done well. It reminds me of town churches on the south coast of England, churches built in the growing seaside and retirement resorts of the late 19th Century, still with a sense of that old-fashioned life, a comfortable, confident urban feeling. It was with some surprise that I looked out of the clear glass of the north transept window to see Norfolk's fields and woods rolling beyond.

The colonnaded octagonal 1860s font is typical of those displayed at the Great Exhibition of a decade earlier. The pulpit is striking, inlaid with medallions of the Evangelistic symbols, but best of all is the glass. It appears to be almost all the work of the O'Connors, who were at the height of their powers in the 1860s. The exception is the glass in the west window, which is by William Wailes and is probably the best in the building, but it is now cut off from casual visitors by the glass screen and locked door in the tower arch. All in all a church surprisingly full of atmosphere, albeit of a 19th Century kind. It is a place to come and experience what the Anglican revival and full confidence of the 1860s meant to a rural parish with money to spend, and it is obviously a building full of life today, if only we were allowed to see inside it.

Simon Knott, October 2022

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The photographs below were all taken in 2007.