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St Peter, Walpole St Peter
St Peter,
Walpole St Peter Having now visited several thousand English churches, it is inevitable that some of them begin to blur into each other. But there are other churches which stick so firmly in the mind that they are easily familiar, and return visits to them are eagerly anticipated. And yet, these are the very churches at which it is always possible to notice something new, and this church is one of them, for not unreasonably St Peter is one of the dozen best and most famous parish churches in England. Alec Clifton-Taylor thought it was the best. Of course, such claims can made for many big churches; but St Peter is not just special for its size. It is indeed magnificent, but also infinitely subtle, the fruit of circumstance and the ebb and flow of centuries. There is a sense of community and continuity as well; this is no mere museum, and it is not simply St Peter's historic survivals that attract its champions. At 160 feet long it dwarfs other East Anglian giants like Southwold, Blythburgh, Cley and Cawston. Only Salle gives it a run for its money. It is also a welcoming church, as all great churches should be. But even if it were kept locked, which it isn't, there would still be so much to see here that it would be worth the journey. This part
of the county has a character more commonly associated
with Cambridgeshire, and of course we are only a couple
of miles from the Nene which forms the border between the
two counties. Walpole St Peter is closer to Peterborough
and Cambridge than it is to Norwich. Indeed, it is closer
to Leicester than it is to Great Yarmouth at the other
end of Norfolk, a reminder that this is a BIG county.
Today, the Norfolk marshland villages tend to be rather
mundane, apart from their churches of course. In this
curiously remote area around the Wash delineated by Lynn,
Wisbech and Boston, there is an agri-industrial
shabbiness accentuated by the flat of the land. But you
need to imagine the enormous wealth of this area in the
late medieval period. The silt washed by the great rivers
out of the Fens was superb for growing crops. East
Anglia, with the densest population in England, provided
a ready market, and the proximity of the great ports gave
easy access for exports. And then there was the Midlands
and the North which could be accessed by the east coast
ports. There are
lots of interesting bosses in the vaulting. It isn't just
the medieval past that has left its mark here. The floor
of the tunnel is flagged, and there are horse-rings in
the wall from the 18th and 19th century when it served
the more mundane purpose of stabling during services. So much to
see, then, even before you come to push open the original
medieval door! And then you do, and the birdsong and
leaf-thresh of the summer morning outside falls away, and
you enter the cool of a serious stone space. The first
impression is of height, because the vista to the east is
cut off by an elegant 17th century screen, as at nearby
Terrington St Clement. The unifying of nave and tower,
almost a century apart, is accomplished by sprung
buttresses high up on the west wall, each carved with a
figure. Here are the Elizabethan communion table, a hudd
( the sentry box-like device intended to keep 18th
century Rectors dry at the graveside) and the
perpendicular light through the west windows. The nave
has a feel that is at once ancient and vital, not so much
of age as of timelessness, of continuity. It's the sheer
mixture of woodwork that impresses - silvery oak broods
in the white light from the high windows. The best of the
medieval work is in the south aisle, where the benches
are tiered and face inwards. A massive dark wood pulpit
and tester broods over the north side. Above all this
rises the pale cream of the arcades, topped by the gold
of the hanging candelabras, and the towering, serious
early 17th century font cover. The font is clearly one of
the Seven Sacraments series; but, as at the great
churches of Blythburgh and Southwold in Suffolk, the
panels have been completely erased. A dedicatory
inscription is dated 1537. And then
you step through into the chancel, and this is something
else again. Here is true grandeur. This immense spaces
rises fully twenty-one steps from nave floor to high
altar. Here is the late medieval imagination writ large,
compromised in the years since, but largely restored by
the late Victorians. You step from subtlety to richness.
Niches and arcading flank the walls leading the eye east,
their blankness becoming sedilia. In the high niches
where once were images, 17th and 18th century worthies
have their memorials. Everything leads the eye to the
great east window, where excellent 19th century glass
completes your journey through the Queen of the
Marshlands.
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