CHURCH LARKING - The Church of The Holy Transfiguration - Great Walsingham

 

Great Walsingham, is Little Walsingham's close cousin, a mile or so up the road. A cluster of picturesque houses, a ford, and in the centre an old Methodist Chapel converted into an Orthodox Church. The old chapel was purchased in 1986 and has become over time what you see today. . Externally the church architecture is very standard late Victorian non conformist style. Not very flashy, with echoes of the gothic in its windows, and an artful but subdued use of two tones of brickwork. As you step beneath it's tympanum, then through a pokey little vestibule, you enter into a compact, but very beautifully decorated Orthodox Church. Its like opening a very plain box to find this gorgeous present inside.

Converting this chapel must have entailed completely gutting the interior of its original furniture, pews, panelling and pulpit. Because what you see now in it's interior is a radical transformation, inserting an Eastern Orthodox structure into the empty box of a chapel. Changing it from an austere paired back protestant aesthetic, into this colourful embellished richness, which could not be more the antithesis of Methodist. Orthodox services are largely performed with the congregation standing, so the centre of the room is usually left relatively free of seating with only a choir lectern in the middle. As the services are often a hour and a half, seating is provided at the back and sides for those who really cannot stand for such a long period. 

The visual focus here is the icon screen, which is the Orthodox version of the rood screen, which separates the body of the church from the area of the altar. This altar is called the Holy Table, and is rarely seen by the general congregation. Here in The Church of the Transfiguration it is guarded left and right by Angels, Gabriel and Micheal. Bookending its central area, known as The Royal Doors, which here has incidents from the life of Jesus. An Icon of Mary with the baby Jesus stands to the left and Christ on its right. And as you move around the church every bit of wallspace or pillar has some sort of icon hanging from it.  Above all of this a dome has been inserted, with an icon of Christ 'Pantokrator' painted upon it.

I know only very basic things about orthodox religious structures, its imagery and their meaning, nor whether there is any significance to the placing of these icon images. It is so different to your standard Catholic or Anglican place of worship. It does, however, possess its own unique and visually distinct power.  The church has a stillness and quiet to it, and even within its subdued interior light, you can feel the love and care that has been lavished upon, what is a small sacred space. It is filled with a particular type of awe and wonder. As a church it is one so easily overlooked, if judged by its exterior. But its interior I would say, is really worth the short walk out to Great Walsingham to see.