| |
|
St
Swithin, Frettenham
 |
|
Frettenham
is another large village in the otherwise
intensely rural rolling fields between Norwich
and the Broads. Someone at Sprowston the previous
week had told me that locals there thought of
themselves as living in 'suburban Broadland', but
I thought this was a better description of
Frettenham. Arthur Mee noted in the 1930s that every
cottage was given half an acre of land by the
late Lord Suffield, although there appears
to have been considerable building since then,
perhaps on some of those half acres. I was
disappointed to find that Post Office Road no
longer had a post office, but School Lane still
had a school, and heading out of the village to
the north was Church Lane. I could see the tower
of St Swithin from a fair distance - it is a big
church, quite a contrast with Spixworth, from
where I'd just come - but I was surprised to find
it all alone, out in the fields. The sprawling
graveyard is lined with old trees, and there was
a sense of abandonment after the crisp suburban
streets of the village. But this is an illusion,
because Frettenham church is still very much in
use. Indeed, in recent decades it has undergone a
considerable amount of work, as will become
obvious inside. At first sight, St Swithin
is a typical late medieval East Anglian church,
with aisles and a clerestory. However, the
rebuilding here was relatively early, as you can
tell from the quatrefoil windows in the
clerestory. The chancel is all Victorian, I
think. A neat obelisk of a war memorial is set
beside the south face of the tower.
|
You step
into a large, clutterless interior, which is the ideal
setting for some extraordinary modern art works. They
appear to date from the 1980s. The first you see on
entering is a brightly coloured St Christopher on the
wall of the north aisle. Both St Christopher and the
Christchild are rather sombre, the slippery rocks beneath
the surface of the water perhaps concentrating the
Saint's mind. Turning to the east, you see what is surely
one of the most remarkable east windows in any Norfolk
church. It depicts the Resurrection - or, more precisely,
the Harrowing of Hell, the Risen Christ fending off Death
while ushered by an angel. The churchwarden working at
the back of St Swithin this February morning told me that
it was designed and installed
by a working party from the Manpower Services Commission,
a claim also made in the church guide, which seems
extraordinary to say the least. I'd love to know more -
presumably they were led in their work by an artist, and
so I wonder who it was?
    
There are
other, smaller works set into the upper lights of the
chancel north windows, which the churchwarden told me
were test pieces. One depicts the keys of St Peter,
another two fish. The lady told me that one of the boys
in the working party had gone on to study stained glass
design, and was today a stained glass artist himself,
which is rather lovely. There are some composites of
medieval glass reset in the south side of the chancel,
both angels, one of them a St Gabriel from an
Annunciation scene.
| The
third piece of modern work is the stencilling
around the window splay at the east end of the
south aisle. It depicts scenes from the life of
St Swithin in roundels connected by vines.
Unfortunately, it has suffered rather badly from
water soaking through at the top. I was told that
it was done by a local man, a Buddhist, and so
perhaps he was responsible for the St Christopher
as well. The Purbeck marble font is reset on
a modern shaft, and the only other medieval
survivals are two female brasses up in the
chancel. The best of these is to Margaret Whyte,
who died in 1435, but also noteworthy is the
inscription beside it to Richard Woodes, Rector
here, who died in 1620, having been a
paynefull and profitable minister of God for
48 years. This hardly sounds like a compliment,
but presumably means that he worked hard, and
that everyone learned a lot from him. Such
Puritan sentiments would resound down the
following half century, as hundreds of
sacramentally-minded Rectors and Vicars in East
Anglia lost their parishes and homes to the
sequestration courts of the Commonwealth period.
They would be described in the witness accounts
as 'scandalous ministers', and their charges
would include drinking in alehouses and
consorting with common whores; but their only
real crime was to disagree with the government,
and to fail to collude with the Puritans' plan to
recast the minds of the common people in their
own mould. It all sounds very familiar.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
