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St
Michael, Sidestrand
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The
Victorian journalist Clement Scott retains his
place in Norfolk's collective imagination for the
part he played in popularising the north-east
Norfolk coast. In the late 19th Century he
described this area of Norfolk in an article in
the Daily Telegraph as Poppyland, and it
was as Poppyland that the area then promoted
itself to holidaymakers, most famously on a Great
Eastern Railway poster - the company had paid for
Scott's visit. Mortlock recalls that Scott, a
Catholic convert, first dreamed up the name
Poppyland while lying in poppy-filled Sidestrand
churchyard, which he described as a Garden of
Sleep.
However, if Scott enthusiasts came to St Michael
to repeat their hero's experience they would be
making a mistake, for, remarkably, this pretty
little rural spot is actually a later Victorian
replacement further inland than the churchyard
that Scott knew. The current St Michael was built
in 1881 at the expense of Sir Samuel Hoare MP of
Sidestrand Hall, but the old one was right on the
cliff edge, and the tower finally fell into the
sea in 1916. The lovely watercolour to the left
shows it on 29th September 1894 as a Miss J.M.L.
Forrest saw it and painted it, a painting now in
the possession of Michael Huggins who has kindly
allowed me to use it. |
Scott's
church was already ruinous, as you can see, and much of
the old fabric was brought here to be built into the new
church. It is apparently to more or less the same design,
although the round tower of the new church is topped by a
tall octagonal stage in the 13th Century East Anglian
fashion. It is done remarkably well. You would not guess,
if you did not already know, that this is a 19th Century
church.
If Scott returned to Sidestrand he might be surprised by
the traffic rushing past this church. It is a busy road,
although the narrow sleeve of a churchyard still feels
like an oasis beside it. In a niche in the porch is what
appears to be a medieval angel holding a chalice,
probably once a pinnacle on a tower or wall at the old
church. You step into the delightful space beyond, crisp
and fresh and yet homely and rustic. The font is set in a
kind of baptistery beneath the tower, the floor an
elaborate greeny-blue mosaic, perhaps intended to
represent water. Above, a brass candelabra dripping in
poppies has a quotation from Romeo and Juliet: My
bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep...
This church must have been very high in the
Anglo-Catholic firmament in its day, and there are still
echoes of this. Pevsner says that the war memorial is by
Seely and Paget, re-using a Renaissance image niche. The
reredos is equally grand, with a gilt, carved
representation of the Last Supper under what may be
reused late medieval cusping. The window above is by the
great Henry Holiday, as are all the windows here, designs
he did for Powell & Sons. Pevsner points out how
appropriate it is that the east window depicts a very
manly Christ walking on the water, given that this church
stands as a memory of its predecessor lost to the great
North Sea, and holds still the sense of the special place
that is Clement Scott's Poppyland.
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