St Mary, Banham, Norfolk
A significant, affluent south Norfolk village, fat and sleepy like an outdated cat on this working day of large warmth in August 2018, and the famed view of its parish church of St Mary is from the green – the village sign, the war memorial, and then that spectacular spire lifting to heaven. It rises more than 40 metres, and is produced of ribbed guide, extremely comparable to the a person around the border at Hadleigh in Suffolk. It experienced been a extended time since I very last frequented Banham church, very long enough back for its sizing and existence to have shocked me. The creating is rather a lot all of a piece, early 14th century. The Victorians introduced the east window, which Sam Mortlock considered somewhat abnormal in its exuberance, but the wealth of flowing tracery somewhere else in the church holds up properly in opposition to it.
You step into a massive, very well-retained jewel. Whilst, inevitably, there was a huge Victorian restoration listed here, there is even now a experience of simplicity, with brick flooring and somewhat cluttered furnishings, all overshadowed by a magnificent west conclusion organ. Large above, the roof bears the date 1622, and the tiny George III royal arms glance like a postage stamp above the high tower arch. The star of the exhibit is the luscious selection of 19th and early 20th Century glass, considerably of it the perform of Powell & Sons. The 1857 east window, unusually, is a cavalcade of geometric styles in pressed glass, with at its centre a crucifixion. The artist was John Clayton, a vigorous scene, his watchers wanting up in an agony, showing what he was capable of just before Alfred Bell arrived along and made him critical. It is reminiscent of the do the job of Robert Bayne in the exact ten years.
The other 19th Century Powell & Sons glass is to the styles of the fantastic Henry Holiday break. The earliest echoes the style of the east window, with medallions of the Baptism of Christ, the Adoration of the angels at the Nativity, and the Ascension of Christ. The ideal, in the south aisle, depicts gorgeously wealthy figures of the 4 Evangelists, every in their own light-weight about two home windows.
The richness of these was echoed 50 percent a century later on by a Powell & Sons window of 1936, which is possibly the freshest and most unforgettable point in the complete church. The risen Christ stands amongst two lights, one depicting spring with sheep grazing beneath an apple tree in blossom, the other autumn with the tree in fruit previously mentioned rabbits and birds. It would be exciting to know who the artist was. The window beside it of the Presentation in the Temple is by Kempe & Co, and seems curiously out of place as if merely not speaking the exact same language, but then I have under no circumstances been a lover of Kempe glass.
The earliest English glass is in the chancel, a array of the twelve disciples and a Tudor arms all in a pre-Ecclesiological fashion. It almost certainly dates from the 1830s, and has not worn very well, the painted aspects have extended due to the fact light and all that continues to be are mosaics of coloured glass suggesting human figures. Nonetheless, there is a quite very good 16th Century continental image of the Blessed Virgin and youngster in the north aisle, collected from somewhere else and established listed here in the 1960s. In the east window of that aisle is a single 19th Century panel depicting Christ with Martha and Mary at Bethany, which seems so odd to uncover in isolation that I consider it might too have appear from elsewhere.
At the east stop of this aisle lies a wood knight, existence-sizing and instead critical in his simplicity within his tomb recess. He is commonly thought to be Sir Hugh Bardolph, founder of the church, but as Pevsner drily notes, offered that Bardolph died in 1203 and this effigy is early 14th Century, it is a bit as well a lot of an afterthought. Woodwork of a afterwards time surmounts the font on its stepped pedestal, a grand gothic font address of the 1860s that may possibly get its inspiration from the Albert Memorial. The monitor arrived upcoming, and by the close of the century the two richly carved reredoses in the sanctuary and the north aisle chapel.
On this day of bright sunshine on a working day in high summertime, the temperature dipping up into the thirties, this felt a happy, assured position, a real statement of 14th Century self-assurance coupled with 19th Century piety and strength. But I remembered staying below at the time prior to, some fifteen decades back, late on a December afternoon. The reduced solar produced the shadows lengthy, and within the church the south aisle home windows glowed as if they had been on fire as the nave and chancel darkened. And as I sat there, the day pale. I could rarely see the options on my camera any a lot more, but Christ in the apple orchard however glowed fiercely, the brightest of the jewels, as if on its very own holding back again the sinking solar. And then, as the afternoon deepened, the home windows about darkened, like stars fading, and this was the very last to go out.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-08-13 07:00:13
Tagged: , Banham , Norfolk , East Anglia
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