#simon knott

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Late medieval glass fragment in the church of St Botolph, Banningham (Norfolk)

But the most memorable survivals here are the fragments of late medieval glass, mostly set in a south aisle window. The figures are mostly restored, particularly the heads which were often the first resort of the hammers of gleeful iconoclasts.

detail and text from here

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Everybody seems to love Brighton, and they can't understand it when I say that I don't, but perhaps I was too often miserable there. In my memory I still associate Brighton with debt, and with the transience of being a student. And then, extraordinarily, a brief, doomed relationship, a love affair, became the one vivid thing, a brief, sweet memory of my year in that brash town. She came from Alburgh, and at first I thought she meant Aldeburgh in Suffolk, and she said it again, Ar-brer, and showed me on a map. How narrow was the single bed we shared, how intense those brief few weeks. And she loved me more than I could possibly have loved her, for I had already met the woman who would become my wife. And so it was messy, and then it ended. But Alburgh still existed, of course, and so coming here I remembered.

Simon Knott, from All Saints, Alburgh

Just one entry in a remarkable gazetteer of the medieval churches of Norfolk...

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In the early 18th century the rector Peter Lawes buried his daughter in the centre of the nave under a small ledger stone. Memento Mori, begins the inscription above a deliciously fierce skull garlanded by laurels, and continues Here lyeth the body of Mary Lawes the youngest daughter of Peter Lawes (ley impropriator and minister of this parish) and Elizabeth his wife who departed this life July 31th & was buried August 2nd 1710 aged 6 years [illegible] months 2 weeks & 3 dayes. Her time was short, the longer was her rest, God calls them soonest whom he loveth best. Incidentally, this rhyming epitaph at the end is identical to one at neighbouring Heckingham of half a century earlier. Lawes himself lies under an impressive ledger stone in the chancel with Elizabeth who died after him, his inscription in Latin, hers in English.

Simon Knott, from St Margaret, Hales

Just one entry in a remarkable gazetteer of the medieval churches of Norfolk...

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Detail from the early 17th century Barkham monument at St George, South Acre (Norfolk)

To the east [of the church] runs a homely, low arcade, dividing off the north aisle. This aisle contains the most significant feature of the church, the Barkham mausoleum of the early 17th century, behind a contemporary wrought iron screen. Sir Edward Barkham, who died in 1623, was a former Lord Mayor of London, and the memorial he shares with his wife Penelope is one of the most delightful in Norfolk. It was made by the Christmas brothers, and features Sir Edward and Lady Penelope lying together, their heads facing west. They are dressed elegantly in the clothes of the day, but it is really the details of the tomb which catch the eye: Life as a young girl, and Death as a grinning, shrouded skeleton, flank the inscription, while an hour glass sprouts gilt wings. Below, two sons and three daughters kneel in prayer, but they seem distracted, lost in thought and peering around corners. Between them, a charnel cage is filled with the skulls and bones of the Barkham dead.

image and text from here, just one entry in Simon Knott’s remarkable gazetteer of the medieval churches of East Anglia

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DEATH, from the early 17th century Barkham monument at St George, South Acre (Norfolk)

To the east [of the church] runs a homely, low arcade, dividing off the north aisle. This aisle contains the most significant feature of the church, the Barkham mausoleum of the early 17th century, behind a contemporary wrought iron screen. Sir Edward Barkham, who died in 1623, was a former Lord Mayor of London, and the memorial he shares with his wife Penelope is one of the most delightful in Norfolk. It was made by the Christmas brothers, and features Sir Edward and Lady Penelope lying together, their heads facing west. They are dressed elegantly in the clothes of the day, but it is really the details of the tomb which catch the eye: Life as a young girl, and Death as a grinning, shrouded skeleton [sadly now missing his right hand and most of his left leg], flank the inscription, while an hour glass sprouts gilt wings. Below, two sons and three daughters kneel in prayer, but they seem distracted, lost in thought and peering around corners. Between them, a charnel cage is filled with the skulls and bones of the Barkham dead.

image and text from here, just one entry in Simon Knott’s remarkable gazetteer of the medieval churches of East Anglia

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As with the church at Tottington, the roof tiles are stored inside here, but the benches are gone, the bells have gone. And yet the ghosts of the past remain. [...] Outside, they lie. Quantrills and Clarks, Rudds and Gathercoles. A weathered Gathercole memorial is profoundly evangelical: Weep not for us our children dear, because we die and leave you here. But look to Christ the crucified, that you may feel his blood applied. Another for a Quantrill wife hopes that God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes. All about, the silence continues.

Simon Knott, from All Saints, Stanford

The 12th-century church of All Saints has stood empty since the Second World War, when the village of Stanford (along with three others and 30,000 acres of Norfolk breckland) were requisitioned to form the military training area now known as STANTA.

The roof of the church is clad in blast-proof sheeting, installed to protect the structure. The original pantiles are stored inside, ready to be restored if the village is given back to the public.

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But the best glass is in the chancel, depicting St George and St Edmund above a landscape of Suvla Bay, and is by William Aikman in 1925. St Edmund and St George remember Edmund Gay, who was a soldier in the infamous 1st/5th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment. Largely recruited from farmworkers on estates in north Norfolk, they sailed for Gallipolli, and were wiped out during the attack on Anafarta in Suvla Bay on the 12th August 1915. Because they had fallen behind enemy lines, they were listed as missing, and a Norfolk legend grew up that they had vanished into a mysterious cloud and were taken up out of this world. This sounds bizarre, but it was of a piece with legends like the Angel of Mons leading the British troops to escape death in Flanders, and with the great rise in spiritualism in this country in the years immediately after the War. [...] Many of the dead boys were workers from the Sandringham estate, and when the bodies were eventually found and identified this knowledge was kept from Queen Alexandra, because it was felt that the truth would be too upsetting for her. Thus, she died believing the legend.

Simon Knott, from St George, Aldborough

Just one entry in a remarkable gazetteer of the medieval churches of East Anglia...