St Mary, Redenhall, Norfolk
I experienced not been back again to Redenhall for 10 yrs, but its wonderful tower is unforgettable, rearing out of the rolling hills to the north of the Waveney. As you get nearer, you see that spreading over and above the church is what have to be just one of the biggest churchyards in Norfolk, and there is a cause for this. Despite the fact that Redenhall is a little village, the parish contains the rather sector town of Harleston, from which it is divided by the horrible Diss to Yarmouth highway. Harleston has a 19th century chapel of relieve in its centre, but when you see St Mary even from a length you know that this is the just one that implies business enterprise.
Reminiscent of the towers at Eye and Laxfield more than the Suffolk border, the tower was almost surely the function of the very same masons. It was bankrolled by the De la Poles, a single of the richest family members in East Anglia in the 15th century, and the simple fact that the elaborate flushwork is only in a few sides of the tower, but not on the south facet which are not able to be found from the street, demonstrates that they have been a really wily bunch when it arrived to splashing the cash. They experienced been beneficiaries of the pestilences of the former century, when the fatalities of roughly 50 % the persons of Norfolk and Suffolk resulted in the split-up of the old estates and the increasing of wages and selling prices, enabling these with dollars to purchase land cheaply. The emergence of a assets-possessing impartial center class without having historic ties and loyalties to their parishes and men and women would inevitably lead to the two terrific ideologies of the second fifty percent of the millennium, Protestantism and Capitalism.
But that was in the future when the De la Poles and fellow proto-capitalists the Brothertons had been generating bequests to rebuild St Mary. Up went the tower and the clerestory, and the aisle windows had been all changed in the style of the working day. Only the chancel was left looking fairly mean and slight. Probably they would have obtained to that too experienced priorities not altered. About the foundation of the tower you can see their leopard and wild gentleman symbols. You could possibly also place tortoises, for this was the image of the Gawdy loved ones. A person curious detail is the carving of farriers’ implements on the west door. These have been taken to indicate that the door was paid for by the area farriers’ guild, but I see no cause to suppose that the carving is modern day, and I consider it is as very likely to be the work of an idle 18th century hand.
Inevitably, the inside of the church was not heading to stay up to the exterior. I experienced come listed here from the two church buildings of the Pulhams, both of those big barns of churches, and this one is a little bit of a barn far too, huge and echoey, but perhaps a classier barn than the two I had beforehand frequented. It is true that the inside of of St Mary has been thoroughly Victorianised, and it is really difficult to summon up any perception of its medieval life. The serious dim woodwork of the scenario of the Holdich organ in the west gallery would have frowned on the acres of coloured glass in the naves at the Pulhams, but here there is relatively clear light with only a several Ward & Nixon windows that can very easily be tuned out.
But there are intriguing corners which give the church incredibly significantly a character of its personal, for case in point the Gawdy chapel at the east finish of the north aisle which includes a spirited classical altar tomb of the late 18th century, a hint of Strawberry Hill Gothick about it, rather uncommon but pretty very well completed. The window of heraldic glass is by Samuel Yarrington, and is said to have come from Gawdy Corridor in the north of the parish, demolished in the early decades of WWII. An intriguing element in the chapel is a 16th Century Venetian linen chest which is also mentioned to arrive from Gawdy Hall. It stands open up, and you can see a depiction of the Annunciation with sailing ships previously mentioned on the within of the lid, which is really curious and instead pretty.
Redenhall church is popular for one distinct medieval survival. This is the amazing double-headed eagle lectern, the wonderful product of a 15th century East Anglian workshop. There is another in a person of the Kings Lynn churches, and the one at St Mark’s in Venice is claimed to be from the very same workshop. I enjoy the minimal lions on the pedestals very best of all. Remarkably, the church has a 2nd medieval lectern, a picket just one, and each are solidly chained down to avert theft.
You can stroll less than the terrific organ to beneath the tower, an spectacular house as substantial as some churches. However no for a longer time utilised, you get an impact of the good processional entrance this ought to after have been, and possibly an inkling of what St Mary was like in its late medieval heyday, a area at very last to replicate on the glory that once was below. As if to remind us of the passing of this kind of items, a surviving painted plaque, likely from a misplaced 17th Century memorial, hangs beside the tower arch. Loss of life, it reads, behold thy selfe to me, these types of 1 was I as thou, and thou in time shall be even dust as I am now…
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-08-06 19:32:31
Tagged: , Redenhall , Norfolk , East Anglia , church , churches
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