St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the extensive, lazy Wonderful Ouse, and at when Norfolk alterations. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees disappear, apart from the odd a single or two that flame like beacons down below the perpendicular sky. There aren’t really fields any longer, just broad prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions incredibly couple properties west of the Ouse – apart from the terrific churches, some of which are between England’s very best. In his book England’s Thousand Very best Church buildings, Simon Jenkins includes no significantly less than ten of the Norfolk marshland churches. There are only nine for the whole of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, possibly, shut enough to the relaxation of Norfolk to however be a correct East Anglian village, and a rather just one at that. One particular to savour if you are heading west and about to suggestion off the edge of the genuine county into that weird, sinking landscape further than inexorably, water spilt in this article would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, huge daring and beautiful with that air of chiarascuro acquainted from its neighbours, a slightly decayed attractiveness with the odor of previous wood and moist in the air.
The village requires its title from St Mary of Magdala, of class, since it is genuinely just one of the Wiggenhalls. More than the several years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has grow to be a little bit of a mouthful, particularly provided the presence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, where there is no real village. So, Magdalen it has turn out to be, incidentally offering its identify to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is one particular of my favorite Saints, and so it was a enjoyment to visit a total village named right after her. The church is a beautiful assemblage of purple brick, flint and stone, wholly natural and organic as it rises venerably in the narrow graveyard. It is all really significantly 15th century, developed on wool revenue, despite the fact that as is popular in East Anglia the fantastic tower is earlier, on the eve of the Black Death. If it had at any time been rebuilt, this would have been a person of the most spectacular church buildings in England.
You phase into a substantial setting up, total of light-weight, a dusty air falling gradually. At the west close, there is a odd minor doorway into the base of the tower – I ponder if the rebuilding of the nave elevated the stage of the floor – and on either facet of it the stays of the rood screen are propped up, just four panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is really curious – the symbols do not frequently look on roodscreens. My instinct was that they might be later, but the operate absolutely seems to be medieval, and the face of Matthew’s winged person has been scratched out.
Much of the character of the nave will come from the woodwork, a pleasing mixture of simple medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the authentic 15th century roof, which is rather rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the major assortment of medieval bench finishes 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 higher lights of the north aisle. Having said that, they are somewhat professional collection, and not conveniently identifiable to the untutored eye, since rather than common Apostles and Saints they primarily represent Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church information, gives an excellent critical to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ ebook Early Art of Norfolk, likely the finest e-book at any time created about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, shows that far more than a couple of them are one of a kind representations in the county, and most likely in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but several have their familiar symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:25:29
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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