St Margaret, Cley-upcoming-the-Sea, Norfolk
In 2004 I wrote: ‘It is repetitious to notice that East Anglia was the industrial heartland of late medieval England, or that this nation was a devout Catholic region at the time, or even that the collision of these two details resulted in some of the most splendid church architecture in Europe.
Almost each parish church in the land bears some evidence of this, but it is particularly clear in the centres of electricity of those people times: at Lavenham in Suffolk, wherever the wonderful wool retailers held courtroom, at Salle and East Harling in Norfolk, in which terrific landed people competed to influence the crown, and below at Cley, the moment at the harbour mouth of Blakeney Haven, the wonderful north Norfolk conurbation of ports, where by the streets thronged with rich retailers and their workers.
Right now, the harbour is missing to us, but you can nonetheless make out its form if you stand in Wiveton churchyard and seem back across to Cley, 50 percent a mile off. At Blakeney itself, the quayside survives with some of its properties to aid a reconstruction in the mind but Cley has very little now apart from its church and a couple of cottages, a village green and a windmill. Ironically, you would not even know that the sea was near.
Of the 4 church buildings of Blakeney Haven, St Margaret was the most important, grandest and most high priced. It is continue to all of these items today. It is replete with all people elements we come across most interesting when we go to a medieval East Anglian church: a seven sacrament font, bench finishes depicting individuals and legendary creatures, brasses, bosses, stalls and the most elaborate niches in the kingdom, a smattering of previous glass, and memorable tracery that, getting Adorned instead than Perpendicular, is unfamiliar in East Anglia. We have explored somewhere else on my web page, at Salle and Cawston, precisely why these churches were developed so big and elaborate. Nicely, St Margaret is a different impressive testimony.
The environment is pretty, on a light rise over the village inexperienced. The graveyard is scattered, many of the stones 18th century, and not lined up in clinical rows by misguided 1970s garden-mower fans. If you appear in late spring the graveyard is uncut, complete of wild bouquets and tall grasses, but in this September early morning it was neat and trim, a velvet mount for the church.
What you see is, at to start with sight, advanced. The vast nave with its aisles and clerestory is all of a piece. The offset tower is relatively imply, and although it appears possible it was meant for rebuilding, the large and attractive west window suggests that it would have been in the very same spot. The chancel is also curiously easy, and at some point would have been replaced. Two transepts adhere out to north and south, the southern one roofless and glassless, that to the north totally ruinous.
The merchant de Vaux family members have been accountable for rebuilding the church, and the new nave was crafted to the south of the original nave, which was then demolished and changed with an aisle. You can nevertheless see its roofline on the east confront of the tower. The learn mason was William Ramsey, one particular of the most substantial in England the Ramsey family ended up dependable for the Palace of Westminster and parts of Norwich Cathedral. Function commenced in the 1320s, and proceeded immediately until eventually the constructing was quite well full by the mid-1340s. This is an early day for the total rebuilding of an East Anglian church, and demonstrates that right here, in Blakeney Haven, the new funds was early. It would not be for a hundred yrs that Suffolk and south Norfolk families have been in a situation to do the identical. Why was this? Partly, the prosperity of the Blakeney Haven ports did not rely just on East Anglian cloth. But there was a further, far more apocalyptic aspect.
In advance of Ramsey could flip his consideration to the chancel and the issue of that blessed tower, a new and horrifying pestilence attained England. For everyone residing in a port, illnesses introduced from abroad were an everyday hazard that experienced to be well balanced towards total work and possibilities for wealth generation. Even so, this was something on a magnificent scale, a pressure of bubonic plague that arrived at the south coastline ports in August 1348 and that by the dismal late wintertime months of 1349 had arrived at Norfolk. Potentially fifty percent the inhabitants died, even though in the ports there looks to have been a bigger survival level perhaps there was extra immunity thanks to previous exposure. On the other hand, Ramsey and his son each died, and the function of the ports was disrupted for numerous generations. The Victorians, relishing the gothic horror of the catastrophe, seemed back from their possess cholera-plagued century and called it the Black Death.
Fifty percent a century later, trade, self-assurance, and a renewed obsession with the cult of the useless led to additional money remaining lavished on St Margaret. This was the time that the mighty south porch was designed, a Perpendicular fortress that guards, instead uneasily, the Embellished entrance. The church was more furnished with a mighty rood monitor, elaborately carved woodwork, and glass and a 7 sacrament font meant to assert the formal doctrine of the Catholic Church. By the early sixteenth century, Cley church was at a peak of its glory, but incredibly speedily people occasions were being to tumble.
The English Reformation introduced to an abrupt conclude the have to have for bequests, and all do the job on establishing the developing stopped. And, condition protestantism would sow the seeds that would assistance England arise as an insular, capitalist nation, shifting styles of trade, and performing away with the need to have for Blakeney Haven, pushing Norfolk back into the aid of a very long, agricultural rest.
So, you acquire a stroll all-around the outside of St Margaret, the window tracery a textual content e-book of the way English architecture designed around the centuries. The most wonderful is that in the south transept, classy lights that create to a cluster of extensive quatrefoils. This was competed on the eve of the Black Death, and is in all probability at the quite apex of English inventive endeavour. But I think that it was never loaded with glass. I can see no evidence that the transepts were completed in time for their use before the pestilence, or that there was at any time a have to have to use them just after the restoration from it. And, then, of study course, the Reformation intervened.
You stage into the church through the south porch, with its flanking shields of the Holy Trinity and the Devices of the enthusiasm. Over, in the vaulting, are bosses. Just one exhibits an indignant lady chasing a fox that has stolen her impressive cockerel. Yet another, displays two devils beating the bare buttocks of a 3rd figure. There is also an Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
Grand Perpendicular is so popular in East Anglia that there is an unfamiliarity about the nave that is spectacular, a feast for the senses. The west stop of the church has been cleared, generating a cathedral-vastness, and the mild, even though not gloomy, does not have that white East Anglian quality common from Perpendicular structures. The scent is of age alternatively than furniture polish, a creamy dampness that recalls previous business enterprise somewhat than decay. The honeyed stone is also in some way international in this heartland of flint. It affects the audio in a various way. The creating requires a certain amount of awe that is not just thanks to its measurement.
We arrived about an hour ahead of a wedding was thanks to get started, and as we explored the developing we saw preparations develop, the pews start off to fill, the minister and choir commence to robe, till we felt we have been intruding, and left just as the bride arrived. But although I was not totally distracted from documenting the building, it was a reminder to me just how significant weddings have become to the Church of England, not just in phrases of the earnings they generate, but as a very last bastion of the grounding of Religion in normal people’s lives. They might no more time have their youngsters baptised, they could no longer come on a Sunday at all but relationship is the area that straightforward Christianity touches their lives – that, and their funeral, of program, even though increasingly folks are additional militantly atheist about demise than they are about enjoy.
The 7 sacrament font seems to be somewhat lonely in its clearing, and is not the most impressive of its variety, despite the fact that the imagery is a small abnormal. The Previous Rites, (NW) show up to exhibit the Priest lying on the mattress on best of the dying gentleman. Confession (NE) displays the Priest and confessing person going through every other throughout a shriving bench. Confirmation (E) is the most persuasive of all, due to the fact it appears to exhibit a tonsured Priest instead than a bishop blessing a team of men and women that incorporate youngsters and toddlers. Mass (SW) is revealed from behind, the Priest elevating the host even though the acolytes on possibly side kneel and maintain tapers. The eighth and odd panel is misplaced, but was in all probability the Crucifixion.
The most spectacularly un-East Anglian function of the church are the good impression niches that line the arcades. They are enormous. Beneath the pedestals are depicted figures, together with musicians (a single performs a fife and drum), St George dispatching a dragon and a fearsome lion with a bone. There are traces of unique color, and they are simply just amazing.
Much more homely are the bench ends, like a gorgeous mermaid, quite a few figures looking at guides, and a poppyhead carved with a face sticking out its tongue, of a type in some cases termed Scandal, while I have by no means been persuaded by this. There are many brasses, some in the north aisle and other folks scattered close to the south doorway, including two figures in their shrouds, and a single fragment depicting a team of 6 weepers. In the north aisle is a interesting assortment of donated and gathered ephemera, some suggesting that in the latest previous this was a reasonably Anglo-catholic spot, including a stunning Russian Orthodox cross. I rushed all over using images while the church loaded with wedding ceremony attendees.
And so, it was time to go. I resolved that I was impressed by this church, but that I failed to enjoy it. Seeking all around at the splendour of William Ramsey’s work, at what survives of its elaborate furnishings, and sensing the echoes of the prosperous sacramental existence it after hosted, I had a sudden vision of apocalypse – not of the Black Death so significantly, as of the conclude of a way of life replaced by something so wholly different in a few brief decades of Reformation. This church had been constructed for so much a lot more than congregational worship, but this was all it could now do. It was as if the Anglican community was camped out uneasily in its ruins, in the vastness of some thing so wholly over and above their imagination.’
Posted by Simon Knott on 2022-03-30 11:18:32
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