All Saints, Rockland All Saints

This trim little church sits more or less all by itself on a narrow lane less than a mile from its village, but my goodness does it seem more remote than that! The steeply rolling fields sprawl to the north of it, and although the large village of Great Ellingham is only a couple of miles to the east, the church's only companions are an 1850s schoolroom and the dramatic ruin of Rockland St Andrew church a couple of hundred yards off. And yet on every occasion I have visited I have found the place ship-shape and crisply turned out, its churchyard trimmed neatly and generally taken care of. This is a pleasant place to wander, with many interesting 19th Century headstones including those to the memorably named local Gathergood family.

The clean lines of the building are equally crisp and restored. The church was pretty much complete by the close of the 13th Century, and then it underwent a fairly overwhelming restoration in the 1860s. Even the tower is cropped severely, without battlements or spirelets. Because of this All Saints does not have any of the drama or mystery of other remote churches and, as if this were all of a piece with its care package, it is kept locked without a keyholder notice.

On the one occasion I did gain access I found it just as neat and trim inside, if rather cluttered, for this is a small church. Some of the bench ends shoe-horned in by the Victorians have 15th Century bench ends attached, but otherwise there is not much else old. Oddly, at the time of my visit in 2006 the church claimed no fewer than three fonts, which was even more striking in such a small space. The good 1880s font with a dedicatory inscription to Maria Hemsworth was in place at the west end, while what was said to be a square Norman font was tucked among the pews, though I couldn't help thinking it looked more like an old cistern. More interesting in any case was a small 19th Century portable font which was stored inside the main font. These were used by sacramentally-minded ministers when visiting newly-born infants who were thought not likely to survive, as must have often have been the case. Almost every church must have once had one of these. I wonder what happened to them?

The glass in the east window is curious. It is a single panel depicting a man dispensing alms to a crowd with the hills of Palestine rolling out behind him. It might have been intended to represent the virtue of Charity, or perhaps it is a scene from a Works of Mercy sequence, but whatever it was it must have originally part of a larger scheme. Was it brought here from one of the nearby Battle Training Area churches?

Equally odd in its way is the small Victorian royal arms set high above the tower arch. It is of what might kindly be called a local quality, and the paint has run, either with damp or because it was hung vertically before the paint had dried, I don't know. The date on it, 1860, coincides with the start of the church's restoration, and it is curious that it is such a poor thing when so much care was taken otherwise, and the font below it is so fine.

Simon Knott, June 2021

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