Pudding Norton has always struck me as a rather unlikely placename to find in Norfolk. It sounds as if it should be somewhere exotic like Devon or Somerset. Little more than a suburb of Fakenham these days, The fine Hall and associated farm buildings sit just off of the Fakenham to Dereham road, and this tower is a familiar sight to drivers.

I was with John Salmon, who was patient and tolerant of my trainspotterish need to visit and photograph ruins as well as working churches, even to the extent of parking on a dangerous bend so I could get the photograph above. The ruin is rather spectacular, I think, particularly the way that the stair turret peeps above the broken wall like the tower of some Scottish baronial castle, or the setting for a Wagner opera on the banks of the Rhine. Shortly after my visit, I was really pleased to receive some close-up images of the ruins from Daniel Smith, a friend of the site. He took the time to go right up to the ruin, and photograph it from within the old nave. His images are below. It is interesting to see that mighty tower from another angle.

It's an early tower, certainly. Pevsner thought 12th century, which may be so given the lancet window at the west end, although the carstone and limestone quoins he also uses as evidence look like later restoration work to me, and may explain why the bulk of the tower hasn't collapsed. He says that the tower was pretty well complete in the 1950s, and the 1991 revision doesn't mention any serious depreciation, so I would be interested to see photographs of this place in years gone by.

Simon Knott, May 2006