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Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen, Lynford

Lynford

north doorway anticipatory mass

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Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen, Lynford

On the edge of Norfolk's Stanta Battle Training Area, hidden away in the woods, is the tiny Catholic church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen. It was built for the fabulously wealthy Mrs Lyne-Stephens in 1878. She lived at Lynford Hall, and, as Pevsner puts it, tired of travelling into Thetford for Mass. Mrs Lyne-Stephens was one of the richest women in England, the widow of a man who'd inherited the fortune made by a relative who'd patented moving dolls eyes. In 1860, she received over a million pounds from her husband's will, which is equivalent of about two hundred million pounds in today's money. She's most famous for bank-rolling the vast Our Lady and the English Martyrs catholic church in central Cambridge, which many tourists mistake for a cathedral, but Our Lady and St Stephen was her private chapel, and she maintained her own chaplain.

The church was built in a corner of the Lynford Hall estate, a short carriage ride from the Hall. It's a small building, which makes its bell turret seem overlarge and perhaps a little ungainly. A long flushworked tracery panel at the top of each side echoes a clerestory. A large statue of the Blessed Virgin and Christchild sits in a niche above the entrance. Although the architect was Henry Clutton, the altar and reredos here were made to a design by the then-late Augustus Welby Pugin who'd been busy next door at West Tofts a couple of decades earlier, and Pevsner suggests his ideas influenced the design of the building as well.

When Mrs Lyne-Stephens died, the estate was bought by an Anglican, who, Pevsner notes, considered the church to be 'a terrible eyesore', and planted the screens of trees around it to hide it. These, now mature, make the building very difficult to photograph. The adjacent presbytery, originally an 18th Century farmhouse, reverted to being a private house on the death of Mrs Lyne-Stephens in the 1890s. For many years the church served as a chapel of ease to the Catholic church in Thetford, and housed the Saturday night anticipatory mass for the parish until into the 21st Century. However, along with several other chapels of ease in the Diocese of East Anglia it was closed by Bishop Michael Evans in an attempt to persuade each parish to come together at a single mass station. It's now in the care of the Norfolk Churches Trust, who keep it locked. Poignantly, the noticeboard still lists the time of the anticipatory mass.

Simon Knott, December 2023

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