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St Mary,
Thrigby
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There
can be few stranger settings for a medieval
church than this, for the small graveyard of St
Mary is surrounded on three sides by the Thrigby
Wildlife Gardens. The first time I ever came here
was late on an early Spring afternoon in 2004; in
many a country graveyard, you might expect to
hear a blackbird piping, or perhaps the last
thrush of the day, but here the graveyard was
full of the sounds of Indian cranes, scolding me
for standing with my back to their enclosure.
Coming back on a beautiful day in 2011 it was the
whoop of monkeys which greeted me. Back in
2004 I had found the church in a very bad
condition, propped up and locked against
all-comers, but much has happened here in the
years since, and Thrigby church is now a
well-cared for and obviousy much-loved building.
What's more, the door was not only unlocked, it
was propped open. The little headstop which I had
found sinister back in 2004 now seemed a kinder,
gentler fellow as he grinned at me.
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The
strangeness of St Mary's setting outweighs the surprise
of anything you might find inside, but in fact this is
rather a curious church. What is basically a building of
the 14th Century received an eccentric restoration in the
1890s, when the windows were reset with wooden tracery,
and the chancel arch rebuilt in yellow brick. If you look
high above the arch you'll see what appear to be Saxon
reliefs, presumably found and reset there by the late
Victorian restorers.
A grand
1826 monument by Blyth & Watson on the north wall
remembers Robert Woolmer, who died at the age of 97 in
1807. It tells us that he was patron of this church,
and goes on to list further that he was a good
benefactor to the widow and fatherless children, a true,
sincere and well known friend to the country. The
monument was erected by Thomas Browne some twenty years
after Woolmer's death. The brass strip beneath it records
that the 1890s restoration was paid for by Thomas Daniel
of Thrigby Hall. A ledger stone in the chancel floor
remembers a Thrigby rector of a century earlier who was
the friend of mankind, a faithful preacher of the Gospel
and steadily practiced the divine precepts he taught. He
was released from a long and painful illness at the
age of 86 in 1791.
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medieval consecration crosses were revealed by
the restoration, but apart from that this is
entirely an interior of the 1890s, without any of
the High Gothic verve which often informs that
decade. It is a simple, undemonstrative church of
no particular significance. Hardly anybody lives
in Thrigby, and those that do are mostly closer
to Filby church. On an earlier version of this
page, after I had found the church approaching
dereliction in 2004, I pondered its future.
Observing that the building was not significant
enough for the Churches Conservation Trust to
take it on, I wondered if perhaps the best
solution would be to hand it over to the wildlife
gardens and let them fill it with monkeys or
something, which would at least be entertaining. I'm glad
that they didn't. For, if Thrigby church is just
an ordinary, run-of-the-mill rural parish church,
it is all the more important for that fact. John
Betjeman once observed that every single Norfolk
church was a pearl in a vast necklace, and to
lose even one of them is to ruin the necklace. St
Mary's is a church to be celebrated, all the more
so for being so ordinary in such an extraordinary
setting. That it has retained a feel of its rural
near-past is also good thing, for it remains an
oasis of peace in a busy world, and a blessing to
those who visit the gardens, and might come in
here as well.
Postscript:
Since I wrote this in 2011, the church has now
closed, and because of its poor condition is
awaiting a decision as to its fate. (September
2024)
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