St Mary Magdalen, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk
You cross the extensive, lazy Good Ouse, and at after Norfolk adjustments. The rippling countryside flattens out, the horizon straightens. Norfolk’s trees vanish, aside from the odd 1 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 – apart from the terrific churches, some of which are amongst England’s very best. In his ebook England’s Thousand Most effective Churches, Simon Jenkins contains no considerably less than ten of the Norfolk marshland church buildings. There are only nine for the full of Northumberland.
Magdalen is, maybe, close sufficient to the relaxation of Norfolk to nonetheless be a good East Anglian village, and a very a single at that. One to savour if you are heading west and about to idea off the edge of the serious county into that peculiar, sinking landscape further than inexorably, water spilt here would roll into Lincolnshire. But the church is a marshland church, large bold and wonderful with that air of chiarascuro common from its neighbours, a somewhat decayed magnificence with the odor of aged wood and damp in the air.
The village normally takes its name from St Mary of Magdala, of study course, since it is really one of the Wiggenhalls. Above the several years, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalene has develop into a little bit of a mouthful, specially provided the existence of the nearby parish of Wiggenhall St Mary, the place there is no true village. So, Magdalen it has turn into, incidentally supplying its identify to a railway station on the Cambridge to Kings Lynn line. St Mary of Magdala is one of my favourite Saints, and so it was a satisfaction to go to a whole village named soon after her. The church is a magnificent assemblage of red brick, flint and stone, wholly organic and natural as it rises venerably in the narrow graveyard. It is all very a great deal 15th century, built on wool revenue, even though as is prevalent in East Anglia the terrific tower is before, on the eve of the Black Loss of life. If it experienced at any time been rebuilt, this would have been just one of the most magnificent church buildings in England.
You phase into a substantial constructing, entire of gentle, a dusty air slipping slowly and gradually. At the west conclude, there is a strange very little doorway into the base of the tower – I wonder if the rebuilding of the nave lifted the level of the floor – and on possibly aspect of it the continues to be of the rood screen are propped up, just 4 panels depicting the evangelistic symbols. Now, this is incredibly curious – the symbols do not generally look on roodscreens. My intuition was that they may well be later on, but the do the job surely seems to be medieval, and the encounter of Matthew’s winged guy has been scratched out.
A lot of the character of the nave arrives from the woodwork, a pleasing combination of easy 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 ends in Norfolk, St Mary Magdalen has the greatest assortment of 15th century stained glass figures. There are about forty of them, scattered in the upper lights of the north aisle. Nonetheless, they are fairly specialist selection, and not conveniently identifiable to the untutored eye, due to the fact relatively than common Apostles and Saints they primarily symbolize Bishops, Archbishops and Popes.
Simon Cotton, in the church information, gives an fantastic crucial to them. Ann Eljenholm Nichols’ e-book Early Art of Norfolk, likely the most effective ebook ever composed about the medieval church buildings of Norfolk, demonstrates that additional than a couple of them are exclusive representations in the county, and perhaps in the Kingdom. Most of them have scrolls, and with binoculars you can decipher some of the inscriptions, but few have their acquainted symbols with them.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2016-09-10 09:25:41
Tagged: , Wiggenhall , Mary , Magdalene , magdalen , Norfolk , East Anglia
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