CHURCH LARKING - Aylsham Parish Church

Like many Norfolk towns Aylsham benefited from the prolonged boom in wool and cloth trading in medieval East Anglia. A priest was first sent here in 1066, and work on building a church began over a hundred years later. All that remains of that first church is the large Lady Chapel window tracery, the roof and chapel having been heavily refurbished in 1489. Some decorated roof timbers with an 'M' for Mary design, date from this period. This refurbishment undoubtedly brought it up to scratch with the north and south processional aisles that were installed earlier in this period. Viewed from the outside the window nearest the Lady Chapel looks abruptly cut off on one side. As most of the window tracery was replaced in the 19th century this might indicate there was a minor miscalculation in the window layout. 

Lady Chapel window and painted roof

Lady Chapel - 15th century Piscina

The remainder of St Micheal and All angels church, the tower and south porch are largely mid 14th century, built under the financial auspices of John of Gaunt, with the chancel being entirely rebuilt a century or so later. So this church was constantly upgraded to the latest architectural fashion, and there was enough surplus money washing around to finance that. 

As you look down the nave you can't help notice that the nave structure bows outward alarmingly. This may simply be a remnant of previously insecure foundations or the consequence of its original roof outweighing the ability of it's arches to hold. The remaining church architecture is largely unchanged since the small spire was added in 1600. Mostly it has been restoration work since the mid 19th century Victorian makeover by Rev Edmund Yates, who was an enthusiastic adopter of the Oxford Movement. But, it has to be said, this has been done with a degree of sensitivity. The nave roof though completely replaced, reuses most of the ceiling bosses from the original medieval roof. All the present pews installed at this time are in keeping, as were the several examples of fine stained glass you'll find scattered around the church, which are Victorian or later. Most are of a very accomplished quality, but you will find a couple of windows that were painted in enamels that have since deteriorated very badly. 

A deteriorated bit of stained glass

The very beautiful east window, with it's four evangelists, unfortunately ended up being partly obscured by the massively imposing reredos placed in front of it. This reredos is notable for two reasons. First, It was designed by John Repton, the architect son of Sir Humphrey Repton, the famous landscape designer, who is also buried in a tomb which rests against the outside chancel wall. Second, the reredos though it looks full on Victorian Gothic Revival, does very cleverly include some of the remaining upper structure from the original medieval roof screen, which sets ones imagination off reassembling it all in one's mind.

Sir Humphrey Repton's Tomb Memorial 

Medieval rood screen panels.

Aylsham has managed to retain all sixteen of the lower panels from its medieval rood screen. These portray all the typical saints you would expect. Unusually, they also include portraits of two Aylsham medieval wool merchants who paid for the rood screen to be gilded - John Jannys and Thomas Wymer.  The saint's faces have all been damaged or erased during the Civil War, but the original quality of the rood screen painting does however still impress. If you look up to the left of the screen you will find the blocked up doorway that would have provided entry to the rood loft itself. The rood loft, before the age of pulpits, was where sermons would be given, and in the absence of a gallery, where musicians might play. Behind the pulpit you'll find a locked gate and a small spiral staircase that still ascends to that doorway.

This staircase once led to a rood loft

15th century font

Wine glass Pulpit

Other pieces of church furniture to look out for include a rather fine 15th century font, with its carvings of the instruments of Christ's passion and symbols of the Evangelists. At its base are the coat of arms of John of Gaunt and Sir Thomas Erpingham. There are some worn medieval brasses set into the floor in the north aisle and the altar enclosure. Aylsham also has an extremely rare carved wooden wine glass pulpit from 1637 with its classically inspired panelling. This pulpit's staircase was entirely replaced in the 19th century. 

Altar sedilia with squint on the right

Through the squint towards the altar

Just to the right of the altar shrine you will find a squint in the wall that allowed you to view the sacrament. These are normally outside the church looking in, and are often referred to as Leper's squints. Was this squint originally outside, but is now inside. or was it conceived as an internal squint from the start? It is most likely a historical remnant from before the present wider chancel and aisles were installed. Otherwise one might be left to conjecture that Aylsham once had an anchorite cell, or an internal space set aside for ill people to view or take sacrament. Though there is no historical record of either happening here. 

For such a small town the church of St Micheal and All Angels, is a rather fine remnant of the medieval period, when it was truly flush with money,with a desire to use their patronage for status and prestige.

CHURCH LARKING - Old Malton Priory Church

 

One look at its pristine white stoned exterior tells you that this is no ordinary Parish Church. St Mary's refers to itself as a Priory Church, which is a residual nod to its medieval monastic origins. For this was once part of a Gilbertine monastery.  

The Gilbertine's were a Christian monastic institution entirely English in its origins. St Gilbert of Sempringham, once a lowly parish priest, founded it in 1130. The Gilbertines went on to build twenty six monasteries over its four centuries of existence, These were mostly in Lincolnshire, with a smattering across East Anglia and the south and west of England. They were unusual in being frequently double foundations, where both canon monks and nuns were cloistered side by side in a bifurcated monastery. Each keeping a discrete separation. Their churches had a dividing wall built down the middle, so they could worship together, whilst neither side could see the other. And if that sounds weird and messed up to you, well, that's because it truly was.

Double monastic foundations were not unusual in the early eras of Celtic Christianity. Whitby Abbey founded by St Hilda ( 657 - 680 AD ) was during her period as Abbess a double foundation. Five hundred years later, the Gilbertines became widely admired and renowned for both their austerity and the strict discipline of their adherence to the monastic Rule. Nevertheless, at the Dissolution, their institutions faced accusations of lax discipline, rumours of sexual fraternisation, and eloping monks and nuns. Whether any of this held any grain of truth, or was merely a convenient opportunistic slander, is difficult to ascertain at this distance..

Rough outline of Malton Priory

All Gilbertine foundations were dedicated to St Mary. The Priory was built after St Gilberts death, in 1150, when foundations for Canon monks alone were becoming increasingly common  Old Malton Priory was built specifically as a men's training seminary, and a place of respite and recuperation. Most of its standard arrangement of monastic buildings are now totally gone or only exists buried beneath grass at a foundation level. A crypt that once lay beneath the kitchen, still survives in Abbey House next door to the church. The Dissolution reached Old Malton priory in 1539. What we now see still standing, is the sole surviving building of the entire Gilbertine Order in England. It's that rare.

What we find at St Mary's Priory Church, is a severely amputated section of the original Priory's nave. The frontage has lost its twin west tower, both side aisles of the nave have been removed, the arches filled up, the upper clerestory chopped completely off, and the full length of its originally vast nave reduced by two bays. What was once a splendid piece of lofty Perpendicular window tracery and stained glass decorating the Churches frontage, is chopped in half by the low flat roof, its upper mullions blocked up. I mean badly bodged doesn't quite cover what was done here. It's an abhorrent mutilation of its body. That said, when one examines closely the front entrance you can very easily imagine what an impressive statement its exterior originally made. Executed in late Norman Romanesque, with Early English stylistic flourishes, it still possesses an element of light, yet austere elegance. 

As you enter into its interior through its wide arched wooden doorway, and then close that door behind you, you are immediately plunged into the full darkness of the porch. Acting as some sort of transition from the lightness without into the semi-darkness within. For when you step out of the porch into the body of the church, you are immediately struck by what a gloomy atmosphere it exudes. And this is with several insertions of later Victorian windows to allow light in. The medieval light levels in this church must have been terribly low, when only lit by candle light and its single window only at half power even in strong summer daylight. No use at all in a winter evensong.

Judging from the exterior there was once a three light pointed arch window behind the altar, which is now blocked up and concealed behind its gilded canopied reredos. The overall feel of this church's interior is not in any way shape or form an elevating one. Resembling a dingy oppressive cave with little natural light penetrating. It's stiflingly sombre ambience, is one I found not at all uplifting nor happy to stay with for very long. Setting off your nervous imagination, as though some very unpleasant dark resonances are harboured within its damaged walls. Still incensed by what has been perpetrated upon its hallowed ground. This is the sort of architectural travesty that makes you angry at the rank hypocrisy of the English Reformation, and all that it stood so little for.

CHURCH LARKING - Pickering Parish Church

 

The Church of St Peter & St Paul with its spire settled atop a short squat tower, still pokes its little righteous finger up above the surrounding town. Perched as it is on the top of a hillock. The churchyard once you climb up the stairs to it, is a surprisingly quiet and intimate enshrouded space. The church being encased on all sides by the walls of houses and masked by the large overhang of trees. This makes it impossible to stand back and get a clear view of what the whole exterior layout of the church looks like. It struck me as having had an incremental, almost organic evolution to its construction.  

Anglo-Saxon Font

Its founding is lost somewhere in Anglo-Saxon times, the only survival being the much used simple rustic bowl of the front. The stolid round pillars of its nave and transepts inform you of its Norman replacement. The chancel being extended and widened by five feet at a much later date, that gives the crossing a slightly eccentric funnel like appearance. But the real surprise and delight of Pickering Parish Church is when you raise your eyes up. To gaze on the space above its pillars, right up to and framing the clerestory, where a rare survival of late medieval wall paintings covers the entire area, on both sides of the nave. The subject matter varies from paintings of saints, St George, St Christopher, Martyrdom of St Edmund, St Thomas, St Catherine, St John the Baptist, to The Virgin Mary, Christ's Descent into Hell, Passion & Resurrection, The Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.

St George

Martyrdom of St Edmund

Commissioned in 1450, these paintings probably took another decade to be completed. Within a hundred years of that date they were whitewashed over, during the Protestant Reformation, and completely forgotten about. To be rediscovered in 1852. There was some contention at the time between the vicar and the Bishop of the diocese, concerning their religious value. So it was not until 1876 that renovation and conservation could be carried out. Quite how extensively they were 'restored' by the Victorians is unclear, but they do have a remarkably clear and sharp appearance. Which must, to a degree, be due to their good fortune at being concealed untouched for nigh on three hundred years.

Roucliffe Chapel Effigies

The rest of the church is quite typical for churches in this area of Yorkshire. Solid honey coloured sandstone grit gives it a lot of warmth, but bequeaths it little by way of lofty elegance. It sits on its sacred ground with a self conscious air, as if all too aware of its squat weightiness, the simplicity of its presence. There are some fine pieces of carved dark wood beneath the tower, in the rood screen and side chapels. Two magnificent examples of medieval tomb carving in the Bruce and Roucliffe side chapels. A splendid Sedilia. Plus a quite unique 18th century pulpit executed in the style of Hepplewhite, beautifully varnished wood with intricately carved lattice-work. So there are other treasures to be found in this church, once the initial astonishment of the wall paintings wanes, and brings your eyes back down to see what lies beneath them.

The Sedilia

'The Hepplewhite' Pulpit

CHURCH LARKING - Wells Next The Sea Parish Church

 

Over the last two years St Nicholas has had external restoration work done, mainly in the tower. This prevented me from 'larking' it, because I always wish to show a church at its best. Preferably in the sort of bright sunshine and blue skies I was gifted with on this occasion. 

Now the moment you look at the exterior of this church you know something is quite a bit awry here. The main body of the church, though English Gothic, looks decidedly generic and relatively recent in execution. Very late Victorian I'd say. Whilst the tower bears all the hallmarks and stone wear of the mid to late fourteenth century. And, sure enough their is an informative plaque which tells you about an all consuming fire in 1879, caused by a lightening strike. All the medieval roof and interior was incinerated, leaving literally only the barest of bones, the external walls and tower.

1879 Photograph after the fire

Judging by the illustration and photo above, the original church did not have a clerestory at all, and was a simple narrow nave/chancel with side aisles. The architect responsible for rebuilding St Nicholas, Herbert Green made two slightly questionable choices. The original architecture of the ruined church looks largely to be in the late Decorated style from the 14th Century. Green has chosen to advance the clock by at least half a century later to a slightly more austere mid perpendicular which is 15th century. Adding a clerestory and a vaulted wooden roof, simply makes the whole interior of the church look absolutely vast, and a distinctly unwieldy space. I can imagine the congregation must feel a bit lost in this Gothic cavern. 

Moving the altar forward of the chancel, is a very modern thing to do, but I guess this might help it feel a bit more intimate. And it then doesn't have the gloomy chancel interior and a gargantuan clear glass window looming over it. Having sold off its church hall, the interior of the church is making a bad fist out of turning it into a multi purpose space, part children's nursery, part coffee club, part lounge area. I understand the practical necessity for this, but it makes the church interior look like a very messy group of squatters have moved in.

The really bland and unimaginative Gothic uniformity of the architectural interior of Wells Parish Church, makes it the prime contender for my new award for - The most architecturally boring church on the North Norfolk coast. There is so little of note here. Now if you go up the road to Holkham or inland to Glandford, you will find superb examples of what the Victorians, at their Gothic Revival best, could do with a church interior.  Here it no doubt ticked all the right boxes for the diocese, but aesthetically it is just dull dull dull. How could anyone make so many wrong choices and produce a church so devoid of spiritual atmosphere?

What is left of the original church, is largely the tower which maintains a degree of elegance and proportion. There are nice carved details on the tower doorway. There is a 13th century door and arch in the chancel with its beautifully preserved decorative details.  There is a large wooden chest from 1625, but little else. Most of the windows are Victorian patterned lead with greenish tinted opaque glass. There are insignia roundels in some of the nave windows, and a muted but fine splash of colour from one of the chancel side windows. But no stained glass worthy of note. A couple of nice figures of St Nicholas and of the Virgin Mary give you the sense that St Nicholas's might lean a tad towards the Anglo-Catholic..

Its clear, that though the expenditure of completely rebuilding the church was no doubt enormous, it was not so awash with money to splash out on a finely carved rood screen for instance to restrain the vastness a bit, or make that enormous chancel window resplendent with a glorious bombardment of awesome colour, so the area feels less dour, but has warmth and is inviting. I'm quite depressed by even the thought of this being used as a space for devotional ritual, its just so awful.