It was about lunchtime, and I was a little disturbed to find that Stalham was a busy market town full of locals competing for parking spaces. When you've spent a few hours in remote rural parishes, coming into somewhere like this can be like entering a circle of hell. Later that week I would see some photos of Stalham in the 1920s, and it seemed a smart little place, full of activity but on a human scale. Cars have brought us convenience, but at an appaling cost.

However, even before we parked I had seen that the door to the church was wide open. This is always reassuring in a town, and it says a lot about both church and town if the building is accessible during the day. In Suffolk, I had found that soulless places like Mildenhall and Haverhill kept theirs locked, while friendly towns like Bungay and Beccles always kept them open. Perhaps Stalham wasn't so bad after all.

There was another reason it cheered me up. Stalham has, I knew, a wonderful font, and I was very keen to see it. So Tom squeezed the car into a gap outside the ironmongers, and we headed back to the church with a spring in our step. The building squats rather clumsily in its little churchyard. The tower was unfinished, a bequest of 1533 not coming in time before dour protestantism put an end to such things.

We stepped through the big Victorian porch and into the relative gloom of the interior. And there it was, the font. It stands high on its pedestal, stately and majestic on its plinth. It almost seems to glow in the dimness. Six of the panels depict a pair of apostles, all apparently similar at first sight, but each holding a symbol and each with their own unique faces. The other two panels depict a very rare Holy Trinity (we had seen one earlier in the day on the font at Acle) and a really excellent Baptism of Christ, with an onlooking angel. The depiction of God and Christ as human figures would have outraged the 16th century Anglican reformers, and so, as happened in many places, the font was plastered over; not to protect them, but to hide them. It was simply easier than chiselling them all off. Often, this process necessitated hammer blows to remove the bits that would protrude through the plaster, but here at Stalham the panels of this elegant font are carved in relatively shallow reliefs, and so they emerged unscathed in the 1850s restoration.

As we stood there, gazing in awe (my mouth slightly open, I must admit) there was a cough and a voice said loudly behind us "This is the font".

I turned to see a rather squat man with staring eyes. "Umm... that's right", I observed. Well, what else could I say?

He came forward, nodding his head solemnly. "You know how it survived?" he said. "They buried it. When Cromwell's men came calling, they buried it. They buried it." He stepped onto the pedestal and draped himself across the font with a satisfied smile on his face.

Now, as you may know, I find it very difficult to keep my mouth shut at times like this. What I should have said was "wow, that's really interesting, thanks for that!" and wandered off to another part of the church. A very distant other part of the church. Instead, what I said was "well, I don't think that's very likely."

"No, listen", said the man. He stood up abruptly. For a moment I thought he was going to collar me like the Ancient Mariner. "They buried it. When Cromwell's men came calling, they buried it." He looked at me simply, finally.

"Well..." I said at last. "I think it is more likely that it had already been hidden for a century before that. The iconoclasm of images dates back to the 1540s, and that image of the Holy Trinity would certainly have fallen foul of the legislation of 1547. It is much more likely that it stayed in situ, but was plastered over. Or possibly, under the Commonwealth they removed it because they were against the idea of infant baptism. There's one church in Suffolk where that happened and - " but he took a step forward off of the plinth until he was almost touching me. I could feel his breath. He lowered his voice.

"They buried it", he insisted.

I had wanted to photograph the font, but at this point I decided to go somewhere else. "Ah..." I observed, and walked briskly off to the chancel. I could see that Tom was amused rather than annoyed, and possibly spoiling for a bit more, but I thought it was time to bale out. The two of us stood where the screen had once been, set between two large squints. It has all been remodelled relatively recently, and looks very neat. I stood beside the northern squint, gazing through to where the high altar once was, imagining a Priest raising the host. There was a cough.

"You can see throught that." The man had followed us. "You can see right through that."

"Ah..." I said again. I'm six foor tall, fourteen stone and fairly fit, so I wasn't particularly worried by this intrusion (unless, of course, he was carrying a gun or a knife), but he was beginning to annoy me.

"It's a squint", I explained. "It goes through to the high altar".

He ignored me. "Do you know why you can see through that?" he said. His gaze was peculiarly penetrating, as if trying to read the truth in my face. "In the old days they didn't like the people to see what was going on, so they built a screen across so no one could see. The people had to look through these holes if they wanted to see what was going on."

Now, this was preposterous. I could see that Tom was really beginning to enjoy it. I drew myself up. "I don't think you'll find that is right", I said. "The screen divided off the chancel from the nave, but no screen I have ever come across prevented people from seeing what was happening in the chancel. These squints are here because there were also altars in the nave, probably guild altars, and they let the Priest celebrating at them see through to the high altar so that he could coordinate his own elevation of the host."

The man was stony faced. "They built a screen across so no one could see. The people had to look through these holes if they wanted to see what was going on", he insisted.

At this point I began to be sure that he was drunk. This didn't necessarily make him more dangerous, of course, but it did give him the potential to be infinitely more annoying. "Well, we are just going to have to agree to differ, I'm afraid", I said.

He looked at me. "What I'm telling you's real", he said. "I am the curate."

Of course, I didn't believe this for a moment, although I did wonder about it afterwards, and Tom thinks he probably was. Instead, we walked off into the chancel, to look at the surviving screen panels, all of them very over-restored, but interesting nonetheless. I took a photograph. Tom and I began trying to decode it, to identify the figures, when we were joined by our terrier-like companion.

"Do you have the book of Saints?" he enquired. I spluttered. "Well, I've got lots of books of Saints. There are lots of books about Saints." He fixed me with that steely stare again, and intoned slowly as if I was stupid: "There - is - a - book - called - the - book - of - Saints." He stood between us, and looked up at the screen. "What do you see up there?"

At this point I was torn between screaming and answering, but I answered. "They're Saints. They were on the dado of the rood screen. They were - " but he interrupted again.

"It is rare. Very rare. This one is the only one", he said, indicating St Roche examining his plague sores. "There isn't another one. This is the only one."

"Right, thank you", I breathed, and escaped. I left poor Tom to mop up. I had wanted to photograph each Saint individually, but it seemed wiser to head back to the font while the man was occupied, otherwise there was a chance I would not be able to photograph it at all. I walked briskly down the church, and fired off about twenty photos in quick succession of the panels and the stem.

I could hear Tom and the man wandering back down the church towards me, Tom getting increasingly frustrated. "But you can't possibly blame it all on Cromwell!" I heard him insist. "What about the Reformation! That happened a hundred years earlier! What about Edward VI?"

I looked up, and saw the man smile patronisingly. "Edward VI? He didn't give us any trouble."

So there we have it; Stalham is the only church in the kingdom that was unaffected by the Reformation. They carried on in their own merry way for another century or more, the Priests doing their conjuring tricks behind a wooden screen while the people crowded around the altar squints to try and see what the hell was going on. And then Cromwell's men came calling, and the people took the font and they buried it. They buried it. The 16th and 17th centuries as seen from planet Stalham.

Tom detained him while I briskly wandered around photographing anything I'd missed. I learned later that the man was attempting to put Tom's Anglo-catholic sympathies to the sword with a low-brow exposition of the evangelical purpose of the war memorial (I owe Tom several drinks still).

A couple of other visitors in the church moved warily out of my way as I strode about with firm intent and purpose. There's a good 18th century memorial in the south aisle, a beautiful pillar stoup by the door with a frame that may or may not have been there originally, and several memorial plaques reset on the chancel steps. Tom at last broke away, and we headed for the exit. As we reached it I could hear that our erstwhile companion had already found another victim. "They buried it", he was saying. He obviously hadn't listened to a word we'd said.

Simon Knott, September 2004

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