St Edmund, Taverham

The suburbs of Norwich straggle out to the north and west along the Drayton and Dereham roads, devouring whole the ancient parishes. And yet, the hearts of the old villages often do survive, and with them their medieval parish churches, so often still with a sense of their former days. One such is St Edmund at Taverham, where Norwich suburbia at last washes up against the Ringland Hills and gives up the battle. The church is set in its wide churchyard above a crossroads, an oasis of calm against all the 21st Century madness to the east. Your first sight as you approach from the west is the round tower, which rises in two distinct stages. The lower two-thirds has lancets which may well be from as early as the 11th Century, while the upper third is a bell stage with a flushwork crown, added towards the end of the medieval period. The north doorway is likely to be contemporary with the lower part of the tower, so there was a Norman church here once.

There is no clerestory, and from the south the nave appears to be entirely the work of the Victorians, but in fact this is not the case. The south aisle and its arcade were rebuilt in 1862 when this side of the church was found to be on the point of collapse, but otherwise the church is substantially a work of the 14th Century. The chancel is attractively thatched, and the reticulated tracery of the east window is striking and unusual. The porch leads down into the south aisle, the nave beyond not seeming much higher thanks to the lack of a clerestory. The first impression is of the carpeted floor and sober 19th Century furnishings, but there is much of interest here. Opposite the south doorway, in the first window on the north side of the nave, there is a rare survival. This is a mid-15th Century rood group in glass. It consists of the Crucifixion flanked by the Blessed Virgin and St John.

Corpus Vitrearum notes that the central four of the six angels in the upper lights are likely to be the original glazing, as the scrolls they hold contain words from the Antiphon to St Edmund in the Sarum breviary: Ave rex gentis Anglorum, miles Regis angelorum, O Edmunde flos martyrum velut rosa vel lilium funde preces ad Dominum pro salute fidelium. A surviving roof boss a few miles off at St Edmund in Norwich shows part of the same Antiphon. The donors below are likely to be Robert Braunche of Stody and Hunworth and his wife. The Corpus Vitrearum site also notes that the rood group with its donors was once in the east window of the south aisle, and was presumably removed at the time of the rebuilding, to be reset in its current location below the angels in about 1900 by J & J King of Norwich.

Likely to be fairly contemporary with the glass is the font, which sits at the west end of the aisle. The plain shields of its bowl would once have been painted but are now blank. In any case, of more interest is the stem, around which stand saints. They are recut, but the figures, who include St Margaret, St Leonard, St Jude and St Anne with the young Blessed Virgin, are intricate and characterful. Other old survivals in stone include the piscina and sedilia in the chancel. Also in the chancel are a couple of old bench ends, but the most intriguing woodwork is the tracery set into the 19th Century altar rails. The railing in of altars was only introduced in the early 17th Century, but this is plainly much earlier woodwork. It is said to have come from Booton church when it was rebuilt by Whitwell Elwin in the 1870s, and formed part of the old medieval screen. However, as Taverham already had a perfectly good screen of its own, the Booton screen was butchered into a new set of rails. They contain circular tracery, a familiar motif from a number of Norfolk screens.

Simon Knott, June 2022

Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.