Little Dunham is a tiny village, but in any case its church sits away from it, off of the road to Sporle. The churchyard is hemmed by pleasantly arboured sheep meadows which in early spring are filled with birdsong and the high-pitched nagging of lambs staggering and bullying their mothers. In the 1980s Mortlock described the setting as serene, and so it remains today. The church is largely an Early English rebuilding of the 13th Century, with a tower added over several decades in the middle of the 15th Century. The very top of the tower appears to be a repair job, perhaps of the 18th Century. But it is the ambience of the Early English period which greets you as you step inside, one of elegance and simplicity. A rustic interior, with the sense of a touchstone church, the accumulation of the ages, although in fact most of the furnishings are from the 19th Century restoration, as are the floor tiles and the elegant crucifixion in the glass of the east window which is presumably by the O'Connors. But perhaps that is why the interior is so pleasing, for it gives the sense of a rural community just out of sight, just beyond the horizon of our own time.

The font probably came as part of the same campaign as the tower. The elegant 13th Century arcade that separates the north aisle from the nave is intriguing. It heads eastwards and then stops at a short length of wall as it reaches the chancel, before then restarting. On the chancel side of the hiatus is a disproportionately large carving of what at first sight appears to be the garlanded head of a bull. However, looking more closely you can see that it is actually the head of a man, his features worn away or deliberately excised, and so the obvious conclusion is that this represents Moses with his horns of light. And yet, and yet. Tthere is nothing else in the church like it, or anything similar in any of the churches round about, and so it remains a curiosity. As I say, the arcade continues eastwards, but at the end of the next bay the aisle finishes, and so the arcade continues as a blank one set in the north wall of the chancel. Was there once a chancel aisle too? On its penultimate pillar there is a large consecration cross in blue paint, and when you look closely you can see more surviving scraps of paint along the arcade, showing that it was once painted, a remarkable thought. There is something similar not far off at Threxton. The angled piscina in the sanctuary must be contemporary with the arcade, and so it is possible to grasp, just for a moment, the glory that was once here in this quiet, remote little spot.

Simon Knott, October 2022

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