Chedgrave is the north side of the town of Loddon, the bit over the river - and it has to be said that the riverside apartments are tremendous. Domestic housing of style and significance is a feature of the Loddon area, thanks to the work here in the 1950s and 1960s by the internationally important architects Herbert Tayler and David Green on befalf of Loddon Rural District Council. Unfortunately, of course, much of their work is now in private hands, and the original features have been replaced by upvc windows and doors. The selling off of council houses was by no means Thatcherism's worst crime, but in this case we have lost the integrity of some super buildings - Loddon even represented Great Britain in international architecture exhibitions at the time.

By the time you get up to the top road, however, the housing is fairly mundane, and here is All Saints, right on the edge of town.

What a strange building this is! For a moment, it is difficult to read. The Norman tower stands to the north of the chancel; this was substantially restored by the Victorians, but the nave to the west of it is certainly Norman, as you can tell by the doorways. The Georgians built a brick north aisle stretching back from the tower. Pevsner, or at least his revising editor gets very confused, and suspects that the tower is in fact a heightened north transept from the 12th century, which is unlikely to say the least. Where he and I both agree, however, is that the 1990s extension westwards of the north aisle is, umm, drastic. As Bill Wilson says, it is like a two-storey house hitting you in the face. I wondered if the adjacent estate was taking it over, infecting it some how, and forcing it to morph into Wimpey or Barratt housing.

All Saints is famous for its continental glass, part of the same collection installed at Thurton and Langley. Dennis King restored it all in the 1960s. I'd have liked to have seen it, but the church was locked, with no keyholder.

While failing miserably to photograph the Norman south doorway without getting too much of the grill of the locked door in, I spotted, of all things, a welcome notice. Welcome, stay a while here and be still, it began. Let go your burden and share in the serenity of this place. It didn't actually say anything about letting people in, but as the temperature was just two degrees above freezing I wasn't inclined to stay a while and be still for too long, at least not on the same spot. As my burden consisted largely of not being able to get into the church, I did wonder whether the welcome notice was heartfelt and earnest, or merely pompous bullshit. However, Chris Harrison, a much more tolerant man than me, tells me that he has found the church open some afternoons. So I shall go back.

There's a marvellous 18th century gravestone to John Crisp beside the extension - or, at least, all that was mortal of him. You can see an image of it below. Curiously, when they were laying the foundations for the extension they discovered the remains of a western round tower, so perhaps that north-east tower is newer than it looks after all.

Simon Knott, January 2005