St Margaret, Rockland St Mary

Rockland St Mary is one of the little parishes of south-east Norfolk, and in the churchyard of its parish church is the last surviving remnant of an otherwise vanished church, the former parish church of Rockland St Margaret. Just to the east of the chancel of St Mary is a long, low flint wall, somewhat overgrown with ivy when I visited in the late winter of 2005. Neil Batcock noted that it had fallen into disuse by the 16th Century, suggesting that the gradual change from devotional to congregational worship even before the Reformation happened might have led to a consolidation of the two churches. The surviving remains would have been the west wall, and this is just one of a number of examples in East Anglia of the churches of two parishes once sharing a churchyard.

Simon Knott, December 2022

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