How idyllic the life of a minister of the Church of England must have been during the early years of the 20th century! I met an old lady in the graveyard, who recalled the Rector here when she was a child in the 1920s. He had just two churches in his care, this one and the similarly remote and lovely Gayton Thorpe. On a Sunday morning he'd cycle to his other church to celebrate an early communion, and then back to East Walton for Matins. Even in those days the villages weren't huge, but today there are barely a dozen people on the electoral roll here, and the Minister responsible for it has charge of five other churches.

As you may imagine, this all gives St Mary a character of its own, and I liked it a lot. A sprinkling of medeival survivals - wild, grinning corbel heads, the quatrefoiled font, the flowered tympanum above the priest door in the chancel, a brass which asks us to pray for the souls of William Bacar and Margaret his wife - are adornments to this simple, lovely space.