St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the broad, lazy Good Ouse, and at the moment Norfolk improvements. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees vanish, aside from the odd a single or two that flame like beacons down below the perpendicular sky. There aren’t really fields any more, just wide prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions incredibly couple properties west of the Ouse – besides the good churches, some of which are amid England’s finest. In his guide England’s Thousand Best Churches, Simon Jenkins includes no fewer than ten of the Norfolk marshland church buildings. There are only nine for the full of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, probably, near more than enough to the rest of Norfolk to even now be a correct East Anglian village, and a quite just one at that. A single to savour if you are heading west and about to suggestion off the edge of the authentic county into that unusual, sinking landscape past inexorably, water spilt listed here would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, big bold and lovely with that air of chiarascuro acquainted from its neighbours, a marginally decayed attractiveness with the scent of previous wood and moist in the air.
The village usually takes its title from St Mary of Magdala, of course, because it is truly one of the Wiggenhalls. Over the years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has become a little bit of a mouthful, specifically supplied the presence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, where there is no true village. So, Magdalen it has grow to be, incidentally giving its name to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is 1 of my favourite Saints, and so it was a satisfaction to stop by a full village named following her. The church is a gorgeous assemblage of pink brick, flint and stone, wholly organic and natural as it rises venerably in the slim graveyard. It is all rather significantly 15th century, crafted on wool money, although as is popular in East Anglia the wonderful tower is earlier, on the eve of the Black Demise. If it had at any time been rebuilt, this would have been 1 of the most impressive church buildings in England.
You action into a massive developing, full of mild, a dusty air slipping slowly but surely. At the west end, there is a odd minor door into the foundation of the tower – I question if the rebuilding of the nave elevated the level of the ground – and on possibly side of it the remains of the rood monitor are propped up, just 4 panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is extremely curious – the symbols do not typically look on roodscreens. My intuition was that they may well be afterwards, but the perform definitely seems medieval, and the deal with of Matthew’s winged person has been scratched out.
Substantially of the character of the nave arrives from the woodwork, a pleasing combination of simple medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the first 15th century roof, which is somewhat rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the biggest assortment of medieval bench finishes in Norfolk, St Mary Magdalen has the most significant assortment of 15th century stained glass figures. There are about forty of them, scattered in the higher lights of the north aisle. Having said that, they are relatively specialist collection, and not effortlessly identifiable to the untutored eye, mainly because rather than familiar Apostles and Saints they generally depict Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church tutorial, presents an excellent important to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ reserve Early Art of Norfolk, likely the best e book ever created about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, demonstrates that additional than a couple of them are distinctive representations in the county, and maybe in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but handful of have their common symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:26:13
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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