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St
Etheldreda, Norwich The plethora of medieval churches
in central Norwich is unusual, but fitting. It seems much
more unusual as you leave the centre and stray south into
the King Street and Rouen Road area to find that this
concentration continues in a part of town that largely
consists of warehouses, factory units and expanses of
working class housing. No wonder that most of the
churches here are now redundant, and several of them have
found new uses.
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St
Etheldreda is a round towered church which was
largely Victorianised. The tower is tiny, the
octagonal bell stage as big as the rest. In 1883
the church still had a thatched roof, but when
the church of St Peter Southgate up the road was
abandoned, there was a large scale restoration
here that replaced windows, roofs and all
internal furnishings. Although
there are remains in the lower walls that are
obviously Norman, and medieval wall paintings had
been discovered in the 1850s, St Etheldreda was
to all intents and purposes rebuilt.
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church became redundant as a result of the Brooke
Report, and was converted for use by local
artists as studio space. You enter through the
former priest door in the chancel, and the first
sight of the interior is disorientating. A long
mezzanine floor splits the length of the narrow
church into levels, with a metal spiral staircase
in the west end and a metal zigzag staircase in
the chancel linking the two. Coming here from the
awful things that had been done to St Simon and
St Jude, it was very attractive and interesting. |
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lower area is larger than the upper, with a sense
of space despite the partitioning into studios.
The upper level, where the partitions reach into
the Victorian roof space, is more cramped. All
the furnishings and features have gone, except
for a fine early 17th century memorial on the
chancel wall to William Johnson and his family,
now partly obscured. Pevsner records a brass, but
I could not find it. This was a
busy, exciting place to explore. Along with all
the other medieval churches of Norwich,both those
in use and those redundant, this building was
open to the public on National Heritage Open Day
2005, for which I was very grateful. A pity,
then, that this was the only place where the
present custodians appeared to resent our
presence, watching us sulkily as we invaded their
space, and in one case answering my cheery
greeting with raised eyebrows. A pity, because
it's exactly the kind of thing you remember.
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Simon Knott, November 2005
You can see thousands of George
Plunkett's other old photographs of Norwich on the Plunkett website
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