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St
Margaret, Suffield
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There
are so many medieval churches in the area between
Aylsham and Cromer that it seems impossible that
any of them can be remote, but many of them are,
and St Margaret is one of them. Actually only a
few fields away from St Giles at Colby, there is
no direct route between them, and in general all
the roads around here twist and turn in a
convoluted way. They were designed for access to
medieval fields, not for getting from one place
to another. When I first wrote about
the church in 2005 I noted that the rather
stark flat-topped tower rises above a boiling of
trees in the otherwise gently rolling expanse of
hedgeless potato fields. Coming this same
way again in 2018, the lane was now high-hedged,
and it was impossible to tell what was growing in
the fields.
The tower was unfinished on the eve of the
Reformation; Pevsner notes a bequest to cover it
of 1523, but this never happened. The massing of
the tower, nave, aisles and chancel make this
appear a big church, but it isn't really. The
creamy light from the clerestory and nave windows
creates a sense of openness, and there are some
quirky features like the four riddle posts from a
Sarum screen, their gilded angels still in place,
two in situ and the other two reset at the far
end of the chancel beside the rood screen dado.
They serve as candle holders, but look most odd.
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The great
treasure of St Margaret is the rood screen, and the hands
that made it included that of the master carver at
Aylsham. Although eight of the figures on the dado panels
survive, the greatest interest here is in the carved
spandrels. In pairs, they depict fables, comic
allegories, marvellous beasts and Christian symbols. In
one pair, a wild man with a club rushes at a dragon. On
another, a pig sits on a barrel playing a harp while
three smaller pigs dance beside a trough. Elsewhere, an
eagle catches a rabbit while its luckier companion
escapes into a burrow. On the adjacent carving, a pelican
pecks its chest to feed its young with blood. An eagle
bites the horn of a unicorn which has poked through the
frame of the screen from the adjacent panel. The
strangest and most vulgar depicts an ape in a friar's
habit sitting on a stool examining its own urine, a
comment on the contemplative habits of friars, while a
fox defecates as it is attacked by geese, certainly meant
to represent listeners turning on an unwelcome itinerant
preacher.
  
  
  
 
The sequence of eight figures on the dado
panels is an odd one. On the north side are the four
Latin Doctors, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory and Jerome.
Jerome has a little lion for company, and across the
entrance to the chancel two more little animals accompany
their saints, the bull of St Luke and the eagle of St
John. These two Evangelists are repainted, and, oddly,
they both have wings. Finally, there are two more obscure
figures. One is the locally popular Sir John Schorne
conjuring the devil into a boot, and the last is a figure
in black, lifting his robe to reveal his armour, a bird
perched on his arm. Obviously, it seems odd that there
are only two of the four evangelists, while two of the
eight Saints are little-known in comparison with the
other six.
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eighth figure is variously identified as the
French St Julian the Hospitaller, to whom a
church is dedicated in Norwich, and the obscure
Englishman St Jeron. It is quite likely that all
these panels all came from here originally, but
that they have been rearranged and reset (there
are also two blank panels of modern wood either
side). There would once have been more, certainly
including the other two evangelists. The four
Latin Doctors may well have been on the
roodscreen gates, as is common in Norfolk. There is a
nice double piscina up in the chancel, and a
couple of curiosities; the panels of the font are
cemented over - I wonder what might be underneath
them? - and an old memorial peeps its head above
the 19th century panelling of the chancel. The
most curious survival of all is pasted to the
outer door of the porch, the remains of an
official poster from the Second World War
announcing the name of the Parish Food Organiser,
authorised by the Ministry of Food to make
all arrangements necessary for feeding the
community if it should be cut off from its normal
sources of supply.
The
parish food organiser was just one of many roles
required as part of the civil defence plan in
case of German invasion. These posters were
supposed to be put up in every parish in the
land, and perhaps it is appropriate that if it
has survived anywhere it should be in such a
remote spot as this.
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Simon Knott, August 2018
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