All Saints, Thurlton

Dozens of small hamlets scatter about the higher land between the marshes in south-east Norfolk, and among them are larger villages like Thurlton, though this isn't saying much and there is still a feeling of remoteness and calm. The church escaped the crispness endowed by many a 19th Century restoration, and remains a simple Norman structure under two separate thatched roofs. Yet there was money here once, and on more than one occasion. The south doorway, no longer in use, is one of those impressive Norman entrances which are typical of the little churches of this area. Pevsner points out that some of the scrollings on the left side of the arch are unfinished. The north doorway is equally impressive, but in a different way, for a few hundred years later came a proper going over of the old building with new windows, the north porch and this grand, elaborate entrance under a canopy of crowns set within spandrels carved with censing angels. To cap it all off at the apex is an image of the Holy Trinity, the figure of God the father still discernible seated on his throne holding the crucified Christ between his knees - you can just make this out. There was probably a dove of the Holy Spirit in there as well. The door beneath seems contemporary with it.

You step inside to the long, narrow nave, which leads the eyes to the 15th Century screen, the dado panels removed but still with its decorative painting. Befoe you reach it there is a St Christopher wall-painting on the north wall facing the now unused doorway. The font is in the East Anglian style with roses and shields alternating on the bowl. It was presumably once painted. The chancel is pleasingly simple under J & J King's glass of the 1860s, angels holding banners naming the Christian virtues. Pevsner pronounced it soppy. There is a small alcove set low down on the north side of the sanctuary. The raising of the chancel floor might explain the height, but what was it? It seems in the wrong place for a piscina or image niche, and too shallow to have been an aumbry. Was its placing here an antiquarian conceit of the 19th Century restorers?

There are 17th and 18th Century memorials to members of the locally important Denny family, and a brass to Thomas Denny of 1646. Another Thomas Denny in that turbulent decade was a prominent puritan and deputy to the itinerant iconoclast William Dowsing, who 'purified' several hundred churches in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire with the help of his deputies.

Simon Knott, November 2020

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