St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the broad, lazy Fantastic Ouse, and at as soon as Norfolk modifications. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees disappear, apart from the odd one or two that flame like beacons beneath the perpendicular sky. There are not actually fields any longer, just broad prairies, and the villages are perfunctory. This is the Marshland.
Pevsner mentions really several properties west of the Ouse – other than the good churches, some of which are among England’s finest. In his reserve England’s Thousand Most effective Church buildings, Simon Jenkins consists of no considerably less than 10 of the Norfolk marshland churches. There are only nine for the complete of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, perhaps, shut more than enough to the rest of Norfolk to continue to be a proper East Anglian village, and a rather a person 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, water spilt below would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, major daring and stunning with that air of chiarascuro acquainted from its neighbours, a a bit decayed elegance with the odor of old wooden and moist in the air.
The village takes its name from St Mary of Magdala, of course, simply because it is genuinely one of the Wiggenhalls. In excess of the years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has turn into a bit of a mouthful, specifically given the presence of the close by parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, in which there is no actual village. So, Magdalen it has come to be, incidentally offering its title 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 pay a visit to a total village named after her. The church is a gorgeous assemblage of red brick, flint and stone, wholly natural and organic as it rises venerably in the narrow graveyard. It is all pretty considerably 15th century, created on wool income, though as is common in East Anglia the excellent tower is earlier, on the eve of the Black Death. If it experienced ever been rebuilt, this would have been a single of the most spectacular church buildings in England.
You stage into a large constructing, whole of light-weight, a dusty air slipping slowly and gradually. At the west finish, there is a peculiar tiny doorway into the foundation of the tower – I wonder if the rebuilding of the nave lifted the level of the flooring – and on possibly aspect of it the stays of the rood display screen are propped up, just four panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is very curious – the symbols do not usually show up on roodscreens. My intuition was that they might be later on, but the do the job definitely seems medieval, and the confront of Matthew’s winged gentleman has been scratched out.
A great deal of the character of the nave arrives from the woodwork, a satisfying mixture of straightforward medieval benches and 19th century box pews beneath the unique 15th century roof, which is rather rustic in character with alternating hammerbeams and queen posts.
Just as neighbouring Wiggenhall St Mary has the largest collection 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 instead specialist assortment, and not very easily identifiable to the untutored eye, simply because relatively than familiar Apostles and Saints they mainly symbolize Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church manual, offers an great critical to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ reserve Early Artwork of Norfolk, likely the best e-book at any time prepared about the medieval churches of Norfolk, exhibits that a lot more than a couple of them are distinctive 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 acquainted symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:25:37
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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