St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the broad, lazy Terrific Ouse, and at the moment Norfolk alterations. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees disappear, aside from the odd just one or two that flame like beacons below the perpendicular sky. There aren’t genuinely fields any longer, just extensive prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions incredibly couple of buildings west of the Ouse – besides the good church buildings, some of which are among England’s very best. In his guide England’s Thousand Very best Church buildings, Simon Jenkins includes no less than 10 of the Norfolk marshland church buildings. There are only nine for the total of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, maybe, near plenty of to the rest of Norfolk to nevertheless be a appropriate East Anglian village, and a very a single at that. A single to savour if you are heading west and about to idea off the edge of the authentic county into that unusual, sinking landscape beyond inexorably, drinking water spilt below would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, big daring and attractive with that air of chiarascuro familiar from its neighbours, a slightly decayed beauty with the smell of old wood and damp in the air.
The village will take its title from St Mary of Magdala, of program, because it is genuinely 1 of the Wiggenhalls. Around the decades, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has develop into a little bit of a mouthful, specially presented the presence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, wherever there is no real village. So, Magdalen it has come to be, incidentally giving its name to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is one particular of my favourite Saints, and so it was a pleasure to stop by a full village named just after her. The church is a attractive assemblage of crimson brick, flint and stone, wholly natural and organic as it rises venerably in the narrow graveyard. It is all very much 15th century, built on wool dollars, although as is typical in East Anglia the terrific tower is before, on the eve of the Black Death. If it experienced ever been rebuilt, this would have been one particular of the most spectacular churches in England.
You step into a big creating, whole of mild, a dusty air slipping little by little. At the west stop, there is a bizarre very little doorway into the foundation of the tower – I ponder if the rebuilding of the nave elevated the stage of the flooring – and on either aspect of it the remains of the rood display are propped up, just four panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is incredibly curious – the symbols do not commonly appear on roodscreens. My instinct was that they could possibly be afterwards, but the do the job undoubtedly appears to be medieval, and the experience of Matthew’s winged male has been scratched out.
A great deal of the character of the nave will come from the woodwork, a satisfying combination of very simple medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the authentic 15th century roof, which is somewhat rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the greatest assortment of medieval bench ends in Norfolk, St Mary Magdalen has the most significant collection of 15th century stained glass figures. There are about forty of them, scattered in the upper lights of the north aisle. On the other hand, they are fairly specialist collection, and not quickly identifiable to the untutored eye, since instead than acquainted Apostles and Saints they largely symbolize Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church guideline, delivers an fantastic important to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ book Early Artwork of Norfolk, possibly the ideal e-book at any time written about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, reveals that a lot more than a number of of them are distinctive representations in the county, and possibly in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but number of have their acquainted symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:25:49
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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