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St Peter
and St Paul, Tunstall
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If
you head south from the A47 east of Norwich, you
enter a land of narrow, high-hedged lanes, a
rolling landscape that dips to meet the rivers.
Apart from the little ferry at Reedham, there is
no way of crossing the Yare, and so this area
remains isolated. Nobody comes here by accident.
As you head eastwards, the landscape flattens,
and the aspect becomes bleaker. We really are
beyond the back of beyond here. A mile from
Halvergate, along a straight, narrow lane, you
reach this church and a couple of neighbouring
houses - and then that is it, pretty much.
Eastwards of here for almost five miles there is
nothing but the marshes - no roads, no houses, no
people, until you can at last cross the river and
meet brash, noisy Great Yarmouth huddled on the
coast. When this church was first here, it
serveds a coastal village, poised on the edge of
the great estuary. The tower must have been a
beacon for shipping. But the estuary was drained
for grazing land, and today the tower is broken
toothed. It gazes down on an empty, roofless
nave, a shattered remnant of the glory that once
was Catholic England.
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It is easy
to see that this church would soon be abandoned once the
Protestant Reformation asserted the primacy of
congregational worship. It was a big church, and there
would never have been enough parishioners to fill it. The
parish was subsumed into larger Halvergate, and the
building here fell into disuse. At the start of the 18th
century, the chancel was restored by the Jenkinson
family, probably for use as a mausoleum chapel. The
chancel arch was bricked in, and a new doorway made at
its base.Their crude plaque above the entrance records
that THIS REBILT By MrS ELZABETH JENKENSN THE RELICT
OF MILS JENKENSON OF TUNSTUL ESq ANd MrS ANNE KELCAL
DAUGHTER OF ye SAId MILES ANd ELIZABETH 1705. It
isn't possible for me to show the letter reversals, but
this is evidence, I think, of what a backwater Tunstall
was if this inscription was thought appropriate, nearly
half as century after the end of the Commonwealth had
restored at least a modicum of Education to the English
people.
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the 1860s, the chapel was extended eastwards, and
a rather pretty window added. The interior is
untouched since then, maintained by local people
and a charitable trust. Visitors are welcome. There is a
plaque to the memory of Edward Boult on the south
wall; a century after the Jenkinson inscription
we are told that he was Esteemed by all who
knew him as an Affectionate Husband, An indulgent
Parent, A kind Relative and a Sincere Christian.
And what more could be asked of any of us? In the
vestry, added at the time of the 19th century
restoration, there is a pretty fireplace - you
can imagine the minister warming himself at it
while he waits for Divine Service to begin.
Apart
from that, the interior is rather dark and
gloomy, with little of historical interest. But
of course, that doesn't matter. You come here for
the atmosphere, a sense of the presence of God
out here where the land takes over, the silence,
and perhaps, a very rustic feeling of what it
might have been like to live in 19th century
rural Norfolk.
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