St Mary, Redenhall, Norfolk
I experienced not been again to Redenhall for 10 many years, but its wonderful tower is unforgettable, rearing out of the rolling hills to the north of the Waveney. As you get closer, you see that spreading outside of the church is what should be one particular of the premier churchyards in Norfolk, and there is a purpose for this. Although Redenhall is a tiny village, the parish involves the fairly market place town of Harleston, from which it is separated by the awful Diss to Yarmouth highway. Harleston has a 19th century chapel of simplicity in its centre, but when you see St Mary even from a distance you know that this is the 1 that indicates small business.
Reminiscent of the towers at Eye and Laxfield in excess of the Suffolk border, the tower was pretty much definitely the do the job of the identical masons. It was bankrolled by the De la Poles, just one of the richest households in East Anglia in the 15th century, and the fact that the elaborate flushwork is only in 3 sides of the tower, but not on the south side which can’t be observed from the road, shows that they were a pretty wily bunch when it came to splashing the funds. They had been beneficiaries of the pestilences of the past century, when the deaths of about half the individuals of Norfolk and Suffolk resulted in the split-up of the outdated estates and the rising of wages and rates, enabling people with income to buy land cheaply. The emergence of a assets-owning impartial center class without historic ties and loyalties to their parishes and people would inevitably guide to the two great ideologies of the 2nd 50 percent of the millennium, Protestantism and Capitalism.
But that was in the potential when the De la Poles and fellow proto-capitalists the Brothertons have been making bequests to rebuild St Mary. Up went the tower and the clerestory, and the aisle windows were being all changed in the vogue of the working day. Only the chancel was remaining hunting rather necessarily mean and slight. Potentially they would have bought to that too experienced priorities not transformed. About the foundation of the tower you can see their leopard and wild man symbols. You could also location tortoises, for this was the symbol of the Gawdy family members. A single curious detail is the carving of farriers’ implements on the west door. These have been taken to imply that the doorway was paid for by the nearby farriers’ guild, but I see no rationale to suppose that the carving is contemporary, and I think it is as very likely to be the function of an idle 18th century hand.
Inevitably, the inside of the church was not likely to live up to the exterior. I had appear in this article from the two churches of the Pulhams, both of those enormous barns of church buildings, and this a person is a bit of a barn as well, broad and echoey, but most likely a classier barn than the two I had earlier frequented. It is legitimate that the inside of St Mary has been extensively Victorianised, and it is actually tricky to summon up any perception of its medieval existence. The critical 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 below there is somewhat obvious light-weight with only a several Ward & Nixon home windows that can quickly be tuned out.
But there are intriguing corners which give the church really substantially a character of its own, for case in point the Gawdy chapel at the east stop of the north aisle which contains a spirited classical altar tomb of the late 18th century, a hint of Strawberry Hill Gothick about it, alternatively unconventional but very very well performed. The window of heraldic glass is by Samuel Yarrington, and is claimed to have occur from Gawdy Corridor in the north of the parish, demolished in the early years of WWII. An intriguing depth in the chapel is a 16th Century Venetian linen upper body which is also reported to arrive from Gawdy Corridor. It stands open up, and you can see a depiction of the Annunciation with sailing ships earlier mentioned on the within of the lid, which is really curious and alternatively beautiful.
Redenhall church is well-known for a single specific medieval survival. This is the amazing double-headed eagle lectern, the wonderful solution of a 15th century East Anglian workshop. There is yet another in a person of the Kings Lynn churches, and the a person at St Mark’s in Venice is said to be from the identical workshop. I appreciate the very little lions on the pedestals most effective of all. Remarkably, the church has a second medieval lectern, a picket a single, and equally are solidly chained down to prevent theft.
You can stroll underneath the wonderful organ to beneath the tower, an outstanding place as huge as some church buildings. Though no extended utilised, you get an effect of the great processional entrance this need to at the time have been, and potentially an inkling of what St Mary was like in its late medieval heyday, a put at very last to replicate on the glory that when was in this article. As if to remind us of the passing of this kind of points, a surviving painted plaque, probably from a shed 17th Century memorial, hangs beside the tower arch. Loss of life, it reads, behold thy selfe to me, these just one was I as thou, and thou in time shall be even dust as I am now…
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-08-06 19:32:28
Tagged: , Redenhall , Norfolk , East Anglia , church , church buildings
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