All Saints, Wood Norton

Wood Norton is one of those quiet villages to the north of the Norwich to Fakenham road. There is a lovely old brick barn at the curve in the road beside the churchyard, and the church across from it is a pretty thing. Simon Cotton tells me that four wills of the 1530s left money towards the building of the tower, and it was begun but never completed before the Reformation intervened, cutting off bequests. The unfinished tower was completed in red brick in the late 17th Century, and there is a small but stately late 15th Century south porch. The nave is tall, but without clerestories or aisles, and the overall effect is that the building is hunching its shoulders.

Despite its size and remoteness, Wood Norton is a busy little place if its church is anything to go by. A sign by the gate told me that on Friday night it would become the village cinema for a showing of Peter Greenaway's film The Draughtsman's Contract, and when I stepped inside I found a village meeting in progress, but they were very happy for me to wander around. Large Perpendicular windows, probably contemporary with the porch, mean that the interior is full of light. It feels exactly like what it is, a pleasantly renewed English village church, well-kept and obviously loved. The 1880s restoration stamped its mark, bringing the east window and its glass by Charles Gibbs and also many of the furnishings. The font is intriguing, for it bulges like a ripe cheese. Pevsner thought that it was from the late 17th Century, perhaps a replacement for one damaged or removed during the Commonwealth, and probably contemporary with the rebuilding of the tower. The cover may well be contemporary, and designed for it.

Little survives of the medieval life of All Saints, but one thing that does is the corbel head of a pig - or is it a cat? It supports the blocked arch to a lost chapel on the south side of the chancel, and if the piscina is anything to go by it probably dates from about 1300. A curiosity. An early 20th Century resident of Wood Norton was William Forbes Norris, who is remembered by a brass inscription. He was attached to the 54th Divisional Cyclist Company, and was killed in the hell of Suvla Bay, along with so many other Norfolkers, in August 1915. He was 21 years old. The insanity of taking bicycles to Suvla, where the cliffs rise hundreds of feet above the sea, tells you a little of what you need to know about those who oversaw the slaughter of the First World War.

Simon Knott, May 2022

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