St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the extensive, lazy Wonderful Ouse, and at when Norfolk adjustments. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees vanish, apart from the odd a single or two that flame like beacons below the perpendicular sky. There are not seriously fields anymore, just large prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions incredibly couple buildings west of the Ouse – apart from the good churches, some of which are between England’s very best. In his reserve England’s Thousand Very best Churches, Simon Jenkins includes no a lot less than ten of the Norfolk marshland church buildings. There are only nine for the complete of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, possibly, near enough to the relaxation of Norfolk to nonetheless be a suitable East Anglian village, and a rather 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 beyond inexorably, h2o spilt here would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, significant daring and attractive with that air of chiarascuro common from its neighbours, a a little bit decayed beauty with the scent of aged wood and damp in the air.
The village requires its identify from St Mary of Magdala, of program, simply because it is genuinely one particular of the Wiggenhalls. More than the decades, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has grow to be a bit of a mouthful, significantly supplied the presence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, wherever there is no actual village. So, Magdalen it has develop into, incidentally providing its name to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is a single of my favourite Saints, and so it was a satisfaction to go to a total village named after her. The church is a beautiful assemblage of crimson brick, flint and stone, wholly organic as it rises venerably in the slender graveyard. It is all really a great deal 15th century, developed on wool revenue, while as is frequent in East Anglia the great tower is previously, on the eve of the Black Dying. If it had at any time been rebuilt, this would have been a person of the most impressive churches in England.
You move into a substantial building, whole of light, a dusty air falling slowly but surely. At the west end, there is a bizarre very little doorway into the foundation of the tower – I speculate if the rebuilding of the nave raised the level of the floor – and on both aspect of it the continues to be of the rood monitor are propped up, just 4 panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is really curious – the symbols do not frequently seem on roodscreens. My instinct was that they could be afterwards, but the work absolutely appears to be like medieval, and the face of Matthew’s winged gentleman has been scratched out.
Much of the character of the nave arrives from the woodwork, a satisfying combination of straightforward medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the first 15th century roof, which is alternatively rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the greatest selection of medieval bench finishes in Norfolk, St Mary Magdalen has the biggest assortment of 15th century stained glass figures. There are about forty of them, scattered in the higher lights of the north aisle. Nevertheless, they are relatively expert collection, and not conveniently identifiable to the untutored eye, for the reason that fairly than familiar Apostles and Saints they mainly symbolize Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church guidebook, delivers an outstanding key to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ e book Early Artwork of Norfolk, probably the ideal ebook ever written about the medieval churches of Norfolk, reveals that more than a couple of of them are unique representations in the county, and probably in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but handful of have their common symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:26:02
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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