CHURCH LARKING - Wiveton Parish Church

St Mary's sits in the pretty village of Wiveton. Positioned over what was once the wide tidal estuary of the River Glaven. With only the ocassional linear mounds of what was once its harbour pier jettys, to suggest its alternative medieval history. From the bottom of the church graveyard you can look across the old flood plain to St Margaret's Church in Cley. But its clear just from one look at the fabric of Wiveton's church that this was always the poorer cousin to Cley and Blakeney. The swanky ones on the opposite bank of the river Glaven.

View over Glaven valley to Cley Next The Sea

The fabric of the church is nothing like as richly embellished as its close neighbours. This may reflect that when the tidal harbour did begin to silt up, it was Wiveton that was devastatingly affected first, and hardest. It bares the scars of past neglect in the many blocked up windows and entrances. The quickest and cheapest way of dealing with a deteriorating building structure.

It's becoming a repeated experience to discover that most churches on the North Norfolk coast, have gone through a period of dilapidation, even to total ruin. Usually in the 18th century. This comes to an end when wealthy Victorians in the 19th, begin putting their new found wealth into repairing the broken walls, windows and roofs. That's obviously been the case in Wiveton, because all the original window glass was either robbed out or shot to bits. To be uniformly replaced with the garish turquoise and orange yellow glazing colour scheme we see before us today. A solution, no doubt, but far from the best one one would have thought imaginable. And one so thoroughly applied everywhere.

Not having the financial resources to embellish this house of God with grand architectural flourishes, it seems to have had to chose a cheaper option. Painting Bibical texts in black gothic lettering above the pillars all the way down the nave. These make Wiveton quite distinctive, but it is a bit like having misguided tatoos from your days of youthful enthusiasm, that you live to regret in later centuries.

This aside, Wiveton has an unremarkable interior, but it is now a sound functioning church. If anything it reveals in its exterior architecture something of its richer past history. The outside walls of the chancel has some delightfully decorative flush work. These might not appear that remarkable, but this is one of the earliest examples of this Norfolk building technique. Its perhaps hard to imagine now, how once upon a time flint flushwork was at the trendy cutting edge of church architecture.

The other thing of note in its exterior are the pinnacles on the tower. No Gothic flourishes here, we have full baroque styled pinnacles  stuck with unselfconscious incongruity on top of its 15th century podgy little tower. From a distance at least this makes it look ever so posh. Which makes you realise what a statement these once were. Wiveton Parish Church, may have once been down, but it was never completely out.