home I index I latest I glossary I introductions I e-mail I about this site

The Norfolk Churches Site: an occasional sideways glance at the churches of Norfolk

St Mary, East Carleton

East Carleton: attractive

Read the captions by hovering over the images, and click on them to see them enlarged.
crisp 19th century work triple lancets echo from the north-east

    St Mary, East Carleton
inside (c) John Salmon   East Carleton is a straggle of close houses on the road to nowhere, like a skein of Norwich suburbia adrift some eight miles from the City Hall; but the church of St Mary backs on to fields and copses, and is attractive in its small graveyard. Although, like nearby Bracon Ash, it is at heart an Early English building, St Mary now is almost wholly the work of the 19th century, the nave and chancel redone in the 1880s and the tower rebuilt in the 1890s. Everything is crisp and clean, and there are a few older survivals discernible in the walls.

Unaccountably, St Mary is kept locked, in an area of generally remoter churches that are kept open; there are keyholders, but on this Saturday a few weeks before Christmas they were both out.

However, John Salmon's interior shots below tell us everything we need to know; this is a fairly typical, run of the mill Victorianisation, except that there appears to be a fragment of medieval glass, the face of Christ, integrated into a 19th century roundel. Curiously, Pevsner records that the font is 15th century, but I do not think that can be right.

As you leave, you might notice a low wall in the second graveyard on the other side of a private roadway. This is all that is left of the second East Carleton church of St Peter.

Simon Knott, January 2006


looking east (c) John Salmon south side of chancel, still looking old (c) John Salmon lectern (c) John Salmon 15th century font? Surely not! (c) John Salmon
curiously unChristian guardian angel (c) John Salmon 19th century roundels - but a medieval face of Christ? (c) John Salmon Mary of Magdala at the feet of Christ (c) John Salmon wall memorial (c) John Salmon skull on a ledger stone (c) John Salmon

   

Free Guestbook from Bravenet 

Amazon commission helps cover the running costs of this site.

home I index I latest I introductions I e-mail I about this site I glossary
links I small print I www.simonknott.co.uk I www.suffolkchurches.co.uk
ruined churches I desktop backgrounds I round tower churches

The Norfolk Churches Site: an occasional sideways glance at the churches of Norfolk