St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the broad, lazy Wonderful Ouse, and at once Norfolk alterations. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees vanish, aside from the odd one particular or two that flame like beacons below the perpendicular sky. There usually are not actually fields anymore, just vast prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions extremely number of structures west of the Ouse – besides the terrific churches, some of which are amongst England’s best. In his ebook England’s Thousand Greatest Church buildings, Simon Jenkins features no much less than ten of the Norfolk marshland churches. There are only 9 for the full of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, maybe, close ample to the rest of Norfolk to nonetheless be a appropriate East Anglian village, and a really a single at that. 1 to savour if you are heading west and about to tip off the edge of the real county into that unusual, sinking landscape beyond inexorably, drinking water spilt below would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, major daring and lovely with that air of chiarascuro common from its neighbours, a a little bit decayed magnificence with the smell of old wooden and moist in the air.
The village will take its title from St Mary of Magdala, of program, mainly because it is truly 1 of the Wiggenhalls. In excess of the many years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has develop into a little bit of a mouthful, especially offered the existence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, in which there is no serious village. So, Magdalen it has grow to be, by the way providing its name to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is just one of my favorite Saints, and so it was a satisfaction to pay a visit to a entire village named after her. The church is a beautiful assemblage of purple brick, flint and stone, wholly organic and natural as it rises venerably in the slim graveyard. It is all fairly much 15th century, built on wool cash, although as is frequent in East Anglia the excellent tower is earlier, on the eve of the Black Death. If it had ever been rebuilt, this would have been a single of the most spectacular churches in England.
You action into a substantial building, whole of gentle, a dusty air falling slowly but surely. At the west finish, there is a unusual little doorway into the foundation of the tower – I ponder if the rebuilding of the nave lifted the level of the ground – and on both side of it the continues to be of the rood display are propped up, just four panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is pretty curious – the symbols do not normally appear on roodscreens. My intuition was that they could be later on, but the get the job done definitely appears to be like medieval, and the experience of Matthew’s winged gentleman has been scratched out.
A lot of the character of the nave arrives from the woodwork, a pleasing combination of simple medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the initial 15th century roof, which is relatively rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the most significant assortment of medieval bench finishes in Norfolk, St Mary Magdalen has the greatest selection of 15th century stained glass figures. There are about forty of them, scattered in the upper lights of the north aisle. However, they are relatively specialist assortment, and not conveniently identifiable to the untutored eye, simply because alternatively than common Apostles and Saints they typically symbolize Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church information, presents an excellent key to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ ebook Early Artwork of Norfolk, most likely the greatest e-book at any time prepared about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, demonstrates that a lot more than a handful of of them are exclusive representations in the county, and probably in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but couple have their common symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:25:59
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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