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

St Nicholas, Fundenhall

Fundenhall: extremely attractive, but not long for this life

Read the captions by hovering over the images, and click on them to see them enlarged.
from the north-west cordoned off central tower south door north side

    St Nicholas, Fundenhall
CHURCH CLOSED FOR SAFETY REASONS   My visit here was ill-fated. I was looking forward to photographing all of Norfolk's St Nicholas churches, because it is fun to help the St Nicholas site, Carol Myers' masterly celebration of the Saint which includes a gazetteer to every church in the world dedicated to St Nicholas.

However, this was the day on which I had taken on a mean-spirited group of parishes to the north of Long Stratton, and I had found every single one of them locked. Peter Stephens had encouraged me by telling me that Fundenhall was usually open, but I got here to find that not only was it also locked, but the church had been closed some six months earlier, and was no longer in use. A cordon surrounded it to stop anyone being near when it finally collapses.

This is a great pity, for several reasons. St Nicholas is an extremely attractive building with a central tower, and churches like this in East Anglia are few and far between. Secondly, although the roodscreen has disappeared, the coving to the rood loft still survives, a rare survival, and found less than a dozen times in all East Anglia. Peter's photograph of it is below, along with other images of the interior when you could still gain access.

A sign on the gate said that a meeting was to be held, and it invited all parishioners. The problem was, simply, that essential repairs would cost an astronomical figure, way beyond anything that the local band of CofE members could possibly find or ever repay. The suggestion was that a new use for the building might be found, but what on earth could become of this place, handsome as it is, when it is so far off the beaten track?

My personal feeling is that churches like this are worth keeping simply for their own sake, as artistic creations and historical artifacts. Most of us these days are not Anglicans, and will never find ourselves in a Church of England parish church on a Sunday morning; but still these medieval buildings remain, and they damned well should be worth keeping as the heart of our communities. What is to be done without us all embracing the lukewarm protestantism of most English village churches?

Feeling slightly aggrieved, and recalling that History Makes Poverty, I wandered around within the cordon, and found the graves of Sarah and Henry Peel. Henry leans on Sarah, as perhaps he did in life. I'm not ashamed to say that my photo of their headstones (right) is the most successful image I have ever posted to flickr.

   Sarah and Henry

Simon Knott, July 2006

    

 north doorway looking west (c) Peter Stephens font (c) Peter Stephens pulpit (c) Peter Stephens
gargoyle looking east (c) Peter Stephens rood loft coving (c) Peter Stephens chancel (c) Peter Stephens


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