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St Mary,
Forncett St Mary
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This
church is an admirable illustration of what a
tiny village can achieve when it sets its mind to
it. Forncett St Mary and Forncett St Peter run
into each other, but the two villages have been a
joint parish for many years, and the Blessed
Virgin is little more than a courtesy title
around these parts now. In this part of south
Norfolk there is a greater concentration of
medieval churches than anywhere else in northern
Europe, and so it is not surprising that back in
the 1970s, that unenlightened decade, some were
fell out of use, among them St Mary which was
officially declared redundant in 1981. The church
was not considered significant enough to be
vested in the care of the Churches Conservation
Trust, and over the course of the next few
decades it fell into disuse and disrepair. Nature
began to take a hold of it. When I
first came this way in 2006, it was after a tour
of the churches to the south and west here, which
seemed to be in lively benefices, and all of them
were open. However, it felt as if I had crossed a
boundary, because I found the neighbouring church
of Forncett St Peter locked, and the church at
Tacolneston up the road barely hanging on to a
precarious existence, the ivy beginning to creep
up the walls. The next parish along, Fundenhall,
had actually closed its church in the last few
months. it felt to me as if the Church of England
was slowly turning out the lights in this part of
Norfolk. But the lights had gone out in Forncett
St Mary long ago. In 2006, there was no earthly
sign of the presence of this substantial former
parish church from the village street. I needed
to use an Ordnance Survey map to locate it. The
overgrown path led from near a telephone box and
the parish war memorial. Beating back the cow
parsley, I made my way down into the narrow
graveyard.
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The south
side of the church was completely overgrown with nettles
and brambles, and on that early June day it was quite
inaccessible. On the south side, I managed to forge my
way to the far end and turn back west to take the first
of the photographs below. The porch was a poignant sight;
roofless and overgrown, it looked as if it might have
been a ruin for centuries, but in living memory local
people had come to church here; they were baptised,
married and sent on their way to the grave.
Access was
not really possible, although there was a loose board
over one of the north nave windows. Inside was
surprisingly neat and tidy, with a most curious structure
over the south chancel chapel, which I realised was all
that was left of Forncett St Mary's organ. I had expected
vandalism and decay, but I had the impression that
someone had tidied up the place after a long period of
neglect.
Through
the 1980s and 1990s there were ideas put forward for a
new use for the building. One suggestion was that it
might be turned into a holiday home by building a
removable structure within the body of the church. Other
ideas included community use and a recording studio, but
all these ideas foundered on the legal difficulties of
transferring ownership. This, of course, added to the
spiral of neglect, but at least showed an interest in
ensuring the building's survival.
In fact,
the catalyst for a revival of the fortunes of St Mary had
already occured when I visited. Ironically, the
instigator of the process which would lead to its rescue
was an outsider, from Gloucestershire, and his concern
was not the church itself but the overgrown graveyard. He
was a family history researcher, who did not know what
had happened here until he actually arrived to look for
family graves. By one of those strokes of good fortune
which often occur in stories like this, his attempts to
get something down about the churchyard coincided with
the arrival in the village of another incomer, who moved
into the cottage next door to the church. They galvanised
locals into recovering the building and churchyard, and
today it has been restored to something like its former
glory. The churchyard in particular is a spectacular
example of what can be achieved with a bit of inspiration
and elbow grease. It seemed extraordinary that they had
recovered it from the overgrown state I had seen it in
four years previously.
I
stepped into a neat, tidy building with modern
chairs set out to face the east, ready for a
concert that night. The church is narrow,
accentuating its length, particularly in the
chancel. The interior is wholly Victorian, with
splendid angels holding up the chancel arch.
There are display boards at the back of the
church giving details of its history, and
particularly of its most famous Rector, John William Colenso. A widely
published mathematician and Biblical scholar,
this church was his first living as a minister.
Colenso left Forncett St Mary in 1853 to become
the first Bishop of Natal, and gradually became
notorious in Anglican circles for a liberal, even
radical, theology which set him at odds with the
rest of the Established Church. He is remembered
fondly in South Africa for his commitment to
equality; suffice to say, he is the only Anglican
Bishop in the modern age to have actually been
excommunicated. It is good that he is remembered
here. The plan is that the building and
churchyard will be accessible to all as a place
for rest and contemplation, but that also it may
be used by the local community for concerts and
other events. Technically speaking, it is still a
redundant church in the care of the Church
Commissioners, but that may soon change if
ownership of the building can be conveyed to a
local trust.
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Simon Knott, July 2006, updated
September 2010
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