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All
Saints, Thornage
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Another
pretty little church adrift in a sea of cow
parsley in the late spring of 2006. Externally,
the tower is elegant and there is surviving
evidence of the south aisle that was once here in
the form of the arcade set in the wall. Both
Pevsner and Mortlock seem to have come to
Thornage in something of a bad mood. Neither
thought much of the inside. Pevsner's view was
that it had been drastically restored,
while Mortlock thought the restoration brutal,
and the interior bleak. The culprit was
AJ Lacey, Diocesan surveyor. His boss was Herbert
Green, so it must have been a fairly thin time
for the Diocese. In fairness to All Saints, this
is a well-kept church, and the nave is full of
light, the great arcade bestriding the south wall
and picked out in stone.
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The late
19th and early 20th century glass is pleasant and
restrained; the best of it is two medallions, featuring a
Madonna and child, and St Joseph. They look the work of
the Kings to me. The modern chairs are a blessing - heavy
furnishings would be oppressive here. The sanctuary is
really rather lovely, and all in all I though that
Mortlock had been uncharacteristically harsh here. Of
interest, certainly, is the 1580s tomb chest to William
Butt, whose father was something big in the household of
Henry VIII. It is similar to a contemporary tomb chest
across the county at Waxham.
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Mee was a big fan of the Butts, as he seems to
have been of any family which supported that old
lecher Henry and his hooligan son. In fact, Sir
William senior was chief physician to the King,
which must have occasionally placed him in an
awkward situation. He seems to have survived it,
and Mee notes that he even appears in Holbein's
portrait of Henry granting a charter to the
barber surgeons. Sir William Butt would have
seen the Elizabethan scriptural wall texts here
when they were new. Part of one survives, looking
as if it must have been very like the one at
nearby Briningham. Perhaps a more interesting
relic of Tudor days is the incised ledger stone,
now set in a wall, which shows the wife of Sir
Clement Heigham kneeling at a prayerdesk.
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Simon Knott, July 2006
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