St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the huge, lazy Excellent Ouse, and at once Norfolk modifications. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees disappear, aside from the odd one particular or two that flame like beacons underneath the perpendicular sky. There aren’t truly fields any longer, just broad prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions extremely couple of structures west of the Ouse – besides the wonderful church buildings, some of which are amongst England’s greatest. In his e-book England’s Thousand Greatest Church buildings, Simon Jenkins features no less than 10 of the Norfolk marshland churches. There are only nine for the full of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, possibly, close plenty of to the rest of Norfolk to continue to be a good East Anglian village, and a rather 1 at that. A single to savour if you are heading west and about to idea off the edge of the serious county into that bizarre, sinking landscape beyond inexorably, h2o spilt listed here would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, large daring and stunning with that air of chiarascuro familiar from its neighbours, a marginally decayed elegance with the scent of aged wood and moist in the air.
The village normally takes its title from St Mary of Magdala, of course, since it is genuinely a single of the Wiggenhalls. Over the several years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has come to be a little bit of a mouthful, specifically presented the existence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, wherever there is no true village. So, Magdalen it has grow to be, by the way offering its name to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is a single of my favorite Saints, and so it was a pleasure to go to a complete village named after her. The church is a gorgeous assemblage of pink brick, flint and stone, wholly organic and natural as it rises venerably in the narrow graveyard. It is all quite significantly 15th century, built on wool income, despite the fact that as is prevalent in East Anglia the good 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 outstanding church buildings in England.
You stage into a big developing, complete of light-weight, a dusty air slipping slowly and gradually. At the west close, there is a peculiar small doorway into the base of the tower – I marvel if the rebuilding of the nave raised the degree of the floor – and on either facet of it the remains of the rood display are propped up, just four panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is quite curious – the symbols do not generally look on roodscreens. My instinct was that they may well be later on, but the work undoubtedly looks medieval, and the facial area of Matthew’s winged guy has been scratched out.
A great deal of the character of the nave comes from the woodwork, a pleasing combination of straightforward medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the first 15th century roof, which is relatively 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 major selection 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 somewhat expert selection, and not simply identifiable to the untutored eye, because fairly than familiar Apostles and Saints they mainly depict Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church manual, gives an outstanding vital to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ e-book Early Artwork of Norfolk, most likely the best ebook ever composed about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, displays that far more than a few of them are one of a kind representations in the county, and potentially in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but couple of have their common symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:26:08
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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