Norfolk is the fifth largest county in England, and has a diversity that can surprise outsiders. Norwich is the biggest city in East Anglia, and the great expanse of the central and southern parts of the county is an intensely agricultural bowl. But it is around the outside that things get interesting, the Broads, the Brecks, the Fens, the Marshland, and loveliest and best-known of all, the north coast. This was a poor and little-known area until the late 19th Century, but then in 1883 the journalist Clement Scott discovered the village of Overstrand and eulogised about this area in an article written for the Daily Telegraph. The legend of Poppyland, a dreamlike English idyll, was born. The two main settlements of Cromer and Sheringham grew swiftly and were briefly very fashionable, two turn-of-the century seaside resorts with all the architecture that implies. Between the the two, Beeston and the Runtons grew at a similar rate, until a continuous ribbon of urban development ran between the two main towns. This probably wasn't what Clement Scott had in mind, and once the First World War had passed the two towns fell from favour with sophisticated Londoners. They disappeared into a kind of time warp, of old-fashioned shops and pubs, of caravan parks and amusements, still attracting in profusion holidaymakers who like exactly that kind of place, and the same is true today.

Cromer and Sheringham are so urban and busy in season that you need to remind yourself that they are actually quite small places. Their populations of about 7,000 and 8,000 respectively are dwarfed by the likes of Dereham and North Walsham, themselves relatively small country towns. Nevertheless, there is never any doubt that Cromer and Sheringham are towns rather than villages, and with their sandy beaches, rock pools, cliffs, piers and amusements, they are the resorts in the Ladybird Book of the Seaside. You expect to bump into Peter and Jane, or Janet and John, carrying their buckets and spades down to the shoreline to forage for sea shells and starfish.

Before the 19th Century, the settlement that became modern Sheringham was little more than a fishing village within a large rural parish centred on the church of All Saints, a mile or so off in a village in the hills, today rebadged as Upper Sheringham. However, there were medieval parish churches in Beeston, West Runton and Cromer, and so as the popularity of the coast grew there was felt a need for an Anglican presence in the growing town of Sheringham. In 1895 the architect JP St Aubyn was commissioned, and this would be his last work, for he died shortly after construction commenced. It was completed under the oversight of his partner Henry Wadling. The exterior is finished in unknapped flint trimmed with red brick, and so it is wholly in keeping with the other buildings of the town. There is a spirelet at the west end above a bell turret.

You enter a building which feels much larger within than it seems without, a wholly urban space. The walls are red brick with ashlar trimming, the pillars of the arcades also red brick, and the floor polished parquet wood. There is an echo of Sir Arthur Blomfield's churches of the same decade. Because of the wide aisles the nave feels as broad as it is long, and the seven-light east window also contributes to a sense of space. Pevsner felt that the overall architectural scheme was reminiscent of a great Hall of the late Middle Ages. There is a large amount of 20th Century glass, but it does not impose in such a large space. It begins at the east end with a busy Ascension of Christ by Hardman & Co of about 1900. Then glass by the same workshop towards the east of the south aisle came soon after, including the Baptism of Christ, the Transfiguration and Christ at Gethsemane.

The next glass came in the 1930s, St George (1933) and St Andrew (1938), both signed by GJ Hunt. These were obviously intended to be the first two in a sequence of the four patron saints of the British Isles, but the Second World War intervened. In the 1950s it was George King & Son who completed the set, with St Patrick in 1951 and St David in 1959. Theirs also were the small panels of the Evangelists on the north side of the church. The latest glass came 1968 by Paul Jefferies of King & Son, depicting symbols of Baptism, Confirmation, Communion and Marriage, four of the seven sacraments, in the west windows. Perhaps none of it is of outstanding interest, but together it makes a nice collection and throws a cheerful light over the great expanse of the nave. The wooden chairs I saw here in 2007 are now gone, replaced by more modern and comfortable seating that makes the building adaptable for more than just worship. It feels a busy place, well-cared for and obviously loved by its parishioners, and it is open every day, as all urban churches should be.

Simon Knott, July 2023

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