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All
Saints, Wreningham
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I'd
been planning to come back to Wreningham for a
while. I'd last been here in May 2006, at the end
of a frustrating journey through south Norfolk.
As the poet Philip Larkin once observed of
Coventry, it's not the place's fault. Wreningham,
on a different day, would have been a splendid
parish, I am sure. But Jacqueline and I had
pursued a long, tortured route up from Long
Stratton, and every single church we attempted to
visit had been locked, with every single
keyholder out. This was church number
eleven. If I had been a more contemplative
Catholic than I am, or a Buddhist perhaps, then
no doubt I would have derived some benefit from
this experience. As it was, I simply observed
"sod this, let's go to the pub in Wymondham
instead", and so we did - and also to the
two main churches there, both of which are open
all day every day, bless them.
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In March
2008, Peter and I set off again into the deceptively
remote hills to the south-east of Wymondham. The villages
out here straggle along windy lanes, the churches often
small and set beside the road in tight graveyards. But it
is an interesting graveyard at Wreningham, with a wealth
of 18th century headstones. And a pleasant church,
although entirely Victorianised, and probably looking
pretty much now as it did in 1855 when it was
considerably rebuilt after the tower collapsed. Money
seems to have been no object, and after scratching his
head for a while the architect appears to have suggested
that they spend it on a wholly unnecessary north
transept.
There is a
curious and rather charming chimney set against the
south-east corner of the tower. Above it, the Millennium
clock is a sign that we are no longer in the 19th
century, or, indeed, the 20th. When Pevsner came this way
in the 1950s, he was pleased to note the ivy that covered
the church, but this has now gone, for better or worse.
I went up
the path to look at the keyholder's address, but the note
I found pinned to the door did not bode well. This
door has been left open on a number of occasions. Please
make sure that you have locked it properly... it
read. If I remind you that perhaps a thousand of East
Anglia's medieval parish churches are open for business
every day, you can imagine how my heart sunk when I read
this. However, when we walked up the road to the cottage
where the keyholder lived, she was very cheerful and
friendly. "I've only just locked it, it's been open
all day!" she laughed.
Other
writers have not found much to say about the interior of
All Saints, and so I was not expecting great wonders. But
in fact, the inside of the church is lovely. It is a
trim, High Church restoration that has remained almost
completely intact, with few later interventions. It
really could still be the 1880s, I thought, as I stood
there in the rich silence. You could go a long way to
find a more aesthetically pleasing document of late 19th
century piety, especially in such an intensely rural
setting.
A large
display in the nave depicts an Anglican mission and
school in a remote district of the country now known as
Zimbabwe, which was started by the son of a Rector of
this church in the 1890s. As was the way in those
imperialist days, he called it 'Wreningham All Saints',
and so it is still known today, a fascinating link
between that troubled part of the world and this rural
outback.
The
turn-of-the-century glass in the east window
depicts the story of Christ calling the children,
and it is done in an oblique style with lots of
details which are worth a closer look. Pevsner
wondered if it was by Heaton, Butler & Bayne.
In the nave, there is a window commemorating
Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887. Several
East Anglian churches have commemorations of the
Diamond Jubilee a decade later, but I don't
recall seeing this before. The floor is carpeted
in green, and this is echoes by the curtain
hanging behind the altar. All in all, it is
simple and beautiful. One
curiosity. Externally, you would have to say that
this church was pretty much completely rebuilt.
And yet, in the roof of the chancel there are
what look like medieval angels, rather large and
out of scale. In the shadowy gloom of a late
winter afternoon, we nearly missed them. Are they
survivals of the earlier building? Or did they
come from elsewhere? Whatever, I was glad that we
had got inside and seen them.
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Simon Knott, September 2006, updated
March 2008
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