St Mary, Redenhall, Norfolk
I experienced not been again to Redenhall for 10 several years, but its fantastic tower is unforgettable, rearing out of the rolling hills to the north of the Waveney. As you get nearer, you see that spreading over and above the church is what will have to be one particular of the major churchyards in Norfolk, and there is a cause for this. Whilst Redenhall is a little village, the parish features the rather market place town of Harleston, from which it is separated by the awful Diss to Yarmouth street. Harleston has a 19th century chapel of ease in its centre, but when you see St Mary even from a length you know that this is the just one that implies business.
Reminiscent of the towers at Eye and Laxfield above the Suffolk border, the tower was nearly surely the function of the very same masons. It was bankrolled by the De la Poles, one of the richest households in East Anglia in the 15th century, and the reality that the elaborate flushwork is only in a few sides of the tower, but not on the south facet which simply cannot be viewed from the road, shows that they have been a rather wily bunch when it came to splashing the dollars. They experienced been beneficiaries of the pestilences of the prior century, when the fatalities of around fifty percent the men and women of Norfolk and Suffolk resulted in the split-up of the aged estates and the climbing of wages and prices, enabling those with revenue to get land cheaply. The emergence of a assets-proudly owning unbiased middle course with no historic ties and loyalties to their parishes and men and women would inevitably direct to the two great ideologies of the next 50 % of the millennium, Protestantism and Capitalism.
But that was in the future when the De la Poles and fellow proto-capitalists the Brothertons had been building bequests to rebuild St Mary. Up went the tower and the clerestory, and the aisle windows have been all changed in the vogue of the working day. Only the chancel was still left seeking alternatively signify and slight. Probably they would have got to that much too had priorities not altered. Close to the base of the tower you can see their leopard and wild person symbols. You may also spot tortoises, for this was the symbol of the Gawdy loved ones. A single curious element is the carving of farriers’ implements on the west doorway. These have been taken to signify that the doorway was compensated for by the neighborhood farriers’ guild, but I see no reason to suppose that the carving is contemporary, and I imagine it is as most likely to be the operate of an idle 18th century hand.
Inevitably, the interior of the church was not heading to live up to the exterior. I had arrive here from the two churches of the Pulhams, both enormous barns of churches, and this just one is a bit of a barn way too, vast and echoey, but possibly a classier barn than the two I experienced previously visited. It is legitimate that the inside of St Mary has been totally Victorianised, and it is genuinely really hard to summon up any sense of its medieval lifetime. The critical darkish woodwork of the circumstance of the Holdich organ in the west gallery would have frowned on the acres of coloured glass in the naves at the Pulhams, but here there is reasonably clear mild with only a handful of Ward & Nixon windows that can effortlessly be tuned out.
But there are interesting corners which give the church very a lot a character of its very own, for illustration the Gawdy chapel at the east finish of the north aisle which includes a spirited classical altar tomb of the late 18th century, a trace of Strawberry Hill Gothick about it, fairly uncommon but pretty effectively done. The window of heraldic glass is by Samuel Yarrington, and is stated to have come from Gawdy Corridor in the north of the parish, demolished in the early a long time of WWII. An intriguing detail in the chapel is a 16th Century Venetian linen chest which is also said to arrive from Gawdy Hall. It stands open, and you can see a depiction of the Annunciation with sailing ships over on the within of the lid, which is quite curious and relatively pretty.
Redenhall church is famed for a person unique medieval survival. This is the breathtaking double-headed eagle lectern, the superb product of a 15th century East Anglian workshop. There is yet another in a person of the Kings Lynn church buildings, and the a single at St Mark’s in Venice is claimed to be from the same workshop. I appreciate the very little lions on the pedestals greatest of all. Remarkably, the church has a next medieval lectern, a wood a single, and equally are solidly chained down to prevent theft.
You can wander below the fantastic organ to beneath the tower, an amazing space as large as some church buildings. Nevertheless no longer used, you get an impact of the fantastic processional entrance this should when have been, and possibly an inkling of what St Mary was like in its late medieval heyday, a area at very last to mirror on the glory that at the time was here. As if to remind us of the passing of this sort of factors, a surviving painted plaque, in all probability from a missing 17th Century memorial, hangs beside the tower arch. Loss of life, it reads, behold thy selfe to me, such one particular was I as thou, and thou in time shall be even dust as I am now…
Posted by Simon Knott on 2018-08-06 19:32:32
Tagged: , Redenhall , Norfolk , East Anglia , church , churches
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