It was with a sinking heart that I arrived at Brockdish to discover the third church in a row that was locked without a keyholder notice. I was beginning to get the impression in this corner of Norfolk that the Church of England was under seige, or that crime was extremely high compared with the rest of the county. St Peter and St Paul was almost completely rebuilt in the 1870s, and I find that such churches are often kept locked, as if the parish feels they have nothing of interest for church explorers, and no sense of the numinous to slake the thirst of pilgrims and strangers. But this is rarely if ever so, and churches like this should have more confidence.

The trim graveyard includes some substantial memorials to the Kay family, including one massive structure with an angel under a spire which would not look out of place opposite the Royal Albert Hall. No expense was spared by the Victorians here at Brockdish. The rebuilding was paid for by the Rector, George France, who also advised architect Frederick Marable on exactly what form this vision of the medieval should take. Curiously, France came from Kent, and a memorial beneath the tower recalls that he is buried there; the tower above speaks more of the West Country than of either his native or adopted counties looking most unusual surrounded by Norfolk fields. All around the building headstops are splendid, and fine details like faux-consecration crosses on the porch show that France was a man of medieval vision. I wondered if it was as good inside.

As I rattled the south door in frustration for the third time, a man who had been tending a grave approached me. "Looks like you're unlucky, boy" he observed in a broad south Norfolk accent. I asked him if the church was ever open, and he told me that it often was. "He has a big sign up sometimes saying church is open. He usually opens up", he said, and then told me where the churchwarden lived.

I approached the churchwarden with some trepidation, having been treated with such suspicion and hostility at Scole an hour or so earlier, but as it turned out he could not have been nicer. He quickly got the key, and came down to the church to open up and show me around. He was knowledgeable, affable and enthusiastic, and Brockdish should be proud of him.

He told me that, after negotiations with the insurance company, they open up the church at weekends only. This seemed a little odd - are thieves less likely to strike on Saturdays and Sundays? - but it was good to know that the churches around here were not completely a closed book to visitors.

I was pleased to find that St Peter and St Paul is similarly grand on the inside, if a touch severe, and also rather dark. France actually devised a church much more Anglo-catholic than we find it today; it was toned down by the militantly low church Kay family later in the century. They took down the rood and replaced it with a simple cross, painting out the figures on the rood screen as well. The churchwarden observed that Brockdish is the only church in Norfolk that has stained glass in every window, which isn't strictly true (Harleston, three miles away, has as well) but we can be thankful that, thanks to the Reverend France's fortunes, it is of a reasonable quality.

The atmosphere is at once homely and devotional, which surprised me a little as the benefice is uncharacteristically low for Norfolk (must be the influence of puritan Suffolk brooding a mile or so off over the Waveney) and it did not surprise me to hear that the church had been chosen as the venue for the installation of the new Rector. I hope he appreciates one aspect of St Peter and St Paul in particular: this is the tiled sanctuary, an increasingly rare beast because they were so often removed in the 1960s and 1970s, when Victorian interiors were unfashionable. Brockdish's is spectacular, a splendid example that has caught the attention of 19th century tile enthusiasts and experts nationally. The stalls in the chancel are another pretence - there was never a college of Priests here - but they looked suspiciously as if they might contain old bench ends within the woodwork. There are some Flemish glass roundels in the south aisle, probably bought by France and Marable from a Norwich dealer.

Also tiled is the area beneath the tower, which France had reordered as a baptistery. The font has recently been moved back into the body of the church; presumably, whoever supplies the church's liability insurance had doubts about godparents standing with their backs to the steps down into the nave. I liked Brockdish church a lot; I don't suppose it gets a lot of visitors, but it is a fine example of what the Victorians did right. Simon Knott, June 2005