Holy Cross, Sturston

The thirty thousand acres of the British Army's battle training area in Norfolk have been closed to the general public since 1944, and right at the centre of them, in the heart of the live firing zone, was the village of Sturston. This is now a beautiful wilderness of overgrown Breckland, and while you might think it must have been a lively community before the Army took it over, in fact this was not the case. The parish had been depopulated by the landowner Edmund Jermyn in the 16th Century. He was one of the fabulously wealthy Jermyns of Rushbrooke Hall in Suffolk, and may never have ever visited Sturston. But by his orders, the houses were demolished and the land appropriated. Almost half the acreage of the parish became a vast rabbit warren, and by the time of White's Directory of 1844 there was just one house in the parish, Sturston Hall with its farm, occupied by one Charles Hall. The forty-four people living in the parish would all have worked for the Hall.

The church was dedicated to Holy Cross as at nearby Caston, and it stood immediately to the south of the Hall. It presumably fell into disuse thanks to Edmund Jermyn, and it was nothing but a low mound by the early 19th Century, so no record of what it looked like survives. But intriguingly, Whites Directory noted that its burial ground remained in use. Today, you can only make out the site of the church with a leap of imagination, but in fact much survives to show that the tiny village of Sturston was here, most notably the wall of the south wing of the Hall, as well as other outcrops of brick walling that mark the sites of other buildings. The ground is particularly bumpy around the site of the hall, concealing fallen masonry under a century or more of bracken and scrub woodland, and some plants rarely recorded elsewhere in East Anglia. Visitors who are given permission to enter this part of the live firing zone are reminded not to pick up anything which might possibly be unexploded ordinance, and also to be careful where they tread.

Simon Knott, December 2023

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a general introduction to the churches of the Norfolk battle training area

a visit to the Battle Training Area churches in 2023