This morning we set off to explore a small area of North Norfolk with a copy of Simon Jenkins’ book ‘England’s Thousand Best Churches’. It’s very fertile hunting ground with 600 medieval churches in the county and although I visited many churches when I was growing up here, I’d never before visited St Agnes Church in Cawston, which Jenkins gives three stars and describes as ‘a monument to cloth’. It is an extraordinarily ostentatious church inside and one can’t help but be wowed by the hammer beam roof carved with a host of winged angels and saints or by one of the highest rood screens in the country, compete with the upper tracery and late 15th century painted saints. It’s extraordinary that this and the l ceiling decoration survived the reformation and Cromwell’s men, not broken up or defaced. Believed to be by Flemish Artists, the rood screen includes St Matthew reading a book with spectacles. There are chapels in the north and south transcepts paid for by wealthy guilds. I was interested to see that the conservator Pauline Plummer had worked on the screen: she had also consolidated panels from Amberley Castle once on loan to Pallant House Gallery and now in Chichester’s Bishop’s Palace. Today we were grateful to the parish priest who was busy recording his Sunday service ready to broadcast tomorrow but who spoke to us afterwards. The new virtual reality for churches. #cawstonchurch #church #norfolkchurches #interiors #medievalart #medievalarchitecture #norfolk #roodscreen (at Cawston Parish Church) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPdyg2tFvYn/?utm_medium=tumblr












