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LANGFORD STANFORD TOTTINGTON WEST TOFTS
St Andrew, Langford
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St
Andrew, Langford If
you didn't know, you would never guess. Although Langford
church is one of the four churches of
the Norfolk Battle Training Area and is not
generally accessible by the public, its surroundings are so familiar that you
would think it just another lonely East Anglian church.
Norfolk and Suffolk have dozens of little churches with
settings like this. Standing by the narrow track with a
field of barley on the right, only the barbed wire topped
fence around the church suggests that something is a
little odd. Not far off, melting mounds of Norfolk clunch
tell you that there was a village here once, but it was
never other than tiny. The three figures appear to be whitewashed, and are wholly pagan, grandfather, father and son dressed in Roman togas and striking attitudes of rational calm. And although it does overpower the place somewhat, there is also a sense in which it seems tucked away against the north chancel wall, as if it were sulking there, and so it should. Eversons and more Garrards are remembered by ledger stones. This was the closest church to the great Hall at Buckenham Tofts, but of course most residents preferred to be remembered in the grander church of West Tofts. The west window glass has bullet holes in it, scars of a time when the activities of the training area were perhaps less controlled than they are today. Stepping outside, there are very few headstones in the graveyard in comparison with the other three training area churches, but in places in the grass there are little pools of flat stone denoting a memorial almost hidden now by overgrowth, soon to be lost forever. Ghosts of ghosts... Simon Knott, May 2004, revised December 2022 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter. an introduction to the churches of the Norfolk battle training area |
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