St Mary, Redenhall, Norfolk
I had not been back to Redenhall for ten yrs, but its good tower is unforgettable, rearing out of the rolling hills to the north of the Waveney. As you get nearer, you see that spreading past the church is what must be one particular of the premier churchyards in Norfolk, and there is a rationale for this. Despite the fact that Redenhall is a very small village, the parish contains the very industry town of Harleston, from which it is divided by the awful Diss to Yarmouth highway. Harleston has a 19th century chapel of ease in its centre, but when you see St Mary even from a length you know that this is the one particular that suggests small business.
Reminiscent of the towers at Eye and Laxfield more than the Suffolk border, the tower was nearly unquestionably the work of the exact masons. It was bankrolled by the De la Poles, just one of the richest family members in East Anglia in the 15th century, and the fact that the elaborate flushwork is only in a few sides of the tower, but not on the south aspect which can not be witnessed from the road, demonstrates that they were being a very wily bunch when it came to splashing the dollars. They had been beneficiaries of the pestilences of the past century, when the fatalities of roughly 50 % the men and women of Norfolk and Suffolk resulted in the split-up of the aged estates and the rising of wages and costs, enabling those with cash to acquire land cheaply. The emergence of a residence-possessing independent middle class without historic ties and loyalties to their parishes and people today would inevitably direct to the two wonderful ideologies of the 2nd fifty percent of the millennium, Protestantism and Capitalism.
But that was in the upcoming when the De la Poles and fellow proto-capitalists the Brothertons were being producing bequests to rebuild St Mary. Up went the tower and the clerestory, and the aisle home windows have been all changed in the fashion of the day. Only the chancel was remaining looking instead necessarily mean and slight. Most likely they would have bought to that as well had priorities not modified. Around the base of the tower you can see their leopard and wild male symbols. You may possibly also spot tortoises, for this was the image of the Gawdy spouse and children. A person curious element is the carving of farriers’ implements on the west door. These have been taken to imply that the door was paid for by the regional farriers’ guild, but I see no rationale to suppose that the carving is modern, and I imagine it is as possible to be the get the job done of an idle 18th century hand.
Inevitably, the interior of the church was not heading to reside up to the exterior. I had come right here from the two churches of the Pulhams, both of those huge barns of churches, and this a person is a little bit of a barn far too, large and echoey, but most likely a classier barn than the two I experienced previously frequented. It is true that the within of St Mary has been completely Victorianised, and it is really really hard to summon up any sense of its medieval life. The severe dark woodwork of the case of the Holdich organ in the west gallery would have frowned on the acres of colored glass in the naves at the Pulhams, but below there is comparatively very clear gentle with only a several Ward & Nixon home windows that can quickly be tuned out.
But there are attention-grabbing corners which give the church pretty a great deal a character of its possess, for example the Gawdy chapel at the east conclude of the north aisle which contains a spirited classical altar tomb of the late 18th century, a hint of Strawberry Hill Gothick about it, fairly strange but pretty properly carried out. The window of heraldic glass is by Samuel Yarrington, and is said to have come from Gawdy Hall in the north of the parish, demolished in the early a long time of WWII. An intriguing depth in the chapel is a 16th Century Venetian linen upper body which is also said to occur from Gawdy Hall. It stands open up, and you can see a depiction of the Annunciation with sailing ships previously mentioned on the inside of of the lid, which is incredibly curious and instead beautiful.
Redenhall church is famous for a single unique medieval survival. This is the impressive double-headed eagle lectern, the wonderful item of a 15th century East Anglian workshop. There is another in just one of the Kings Lynn church buildings, and the a single at St Mark’s in Venice is said to be from the identical workshop. I like the minor lions on the pedestals best of all. Remarkably, the church has a next medieval lectern, a wooden 1, and each are solidly chained down to protect against theft.
You can wander less than the great organ to beneath the tower, an outstanding area as large as some church buildings. Although no longer made use of, you get an impact of the wonderful processional entrance this need to after have been, and probably an inkling of what St Mary was like in its late medieval heyday, a location at past to mirror on the glory that as soon as was right here. As if to remind us of the passing of this sort of items, a surviving painted plaque, almost certainly from a lost 17th Century memorial, hangs beside the tower arch. Loss of life, it reads, behold thy selfe to me, this sort of a single was I as thou, and thou in time shall be even dust as I am now…
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-08-06 19:32:29
Tagged: , Redenhall , Norfolk , East Anglia , church , church buildings
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