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St Mary,
Surlingham
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Surlingham
is a lovely place, not far removed from Norwich
but hidden away in the bend of the great, wide
river. It feels far, far more remote than it is.
Coming here in the 1940s, Arthur Mee bemoaned the
fact that the setting of the church was spoilt by
the aunt sallies of the petrol age, by
which he meant the village petrol pumps, probably
set up outside the old smithy: but they are long
gone today, alas. We were heading back
towards Norwich on a fairly dull afternoon in the
late spring of 2008. We'd been out in the
Lothingland peninsula, and by contrast this area
was attractively rolling and wooded. But the
humidity was heavy, the sky lowering to meet the
ground, and we were barely an hour away from
heavy rain. As we parked outside the graveyard, a
woman was hurrying towards the gate. I asked her
if she had just locked the church, and she
smiled, and told us no, and that it was always
open in daylight hours. "There's always a
welcome here", she said.
The
rugged Norman round tower rises in a number of
stages, as if it had telescoped out of the
ground. There is a pretty later bell stage
perched on the top. The north aisle makes an
assymetric shape of the church behind it, but
this is still a small church in an intimate
graveyard.
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An unusual
feature is that the chancel appears to have been
completely rebuilt in the 18th century in an
idiosyncratic manner. The east and south walls are in
brick, but the north side is stone faced in what appears
to be a deliberate attempt to make it look 'old', a kind
of antiquarian folly. The north doorway was rebuilt in
brick at the same time.
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south doorway opens into a nave which is full of
white light, a pretty interior, with a gallery at
the west end which looks as if it might have been
a layer of a wedding cake. By contrast, the 15th
century font is like a melting cheese, with deep
set reliefs in the traditional East Anglian
manner. The green ceiling of the chancel and the
wooden framed east window give it a rather jolly
organic feel. All in all, properly Anglican, with
a sense of being well-loved and cared for. Apart from
the font, there are other relics of medieval
days. John Alnwick was Priest here in the
church's Catholic days (indeed, Mee points out
that he was probably the first Priest to use the
font when it was new) and he has a brass effigy
in the chancel from about 1460. One of his
successors is remembered by a rare chalice brass
to the west. Both images did well to survive the
Anglican reformation, and the puritans of a
century later.
Outside,
the cow parsley to the east and north of the
church was alive with flitting and stumbling
bees, all busy collecting nectar. I wondered if
they were descendants of the ones that John
Alnwick would have known.
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