The wind gets up, flurrying the high grasses. Clouds scutter in the wide Norfolk sky. It is early August 2005, a day in that mixed summer of heat and rain and unpredictability. Tom and I have come here to Wickmere in late afternoon at the end of two days exploring churches in the area between Cromer and Aylsham; it is number 32. One of the great joys of visiting churches in this area is that nearly all of them are open and welcoming to visitors; but St Andrew isn't, which is a shame. And there is no keyholder listed. We peer through the little barred window in the door (left), but we can't see much inside at all.

Instead, we wander in the graveyard, remote at a crossroads with few other buildings in sight. Below its feminine late medieval crown, the narrow round tower begins in a rather austere manner, a little like a chimney of a Cornish tin mine, before tapering towards pretty 14th century bell windows. St Andrew is a rare 20th century example of what was commonplace at the time the tower was topped; a major restoration paid for from a bequest, with the provider of that bequest memorialised in effigy inside.

He was Baron Walpole, the fifth Earl of Orford, who died in 1935. The Orfords traced their title back to Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister, and the ruination of the church beside their Hall at Wolterton led them to adopt this one. The fifth Earl now lies, patently asleep, inside; Walter Caroe was paid to thoroughly rescue this building from collapse, which was accomplished before the Second World War broke out. Tie beams stopped the clerestory and roof pushing the arcades outwards, and the bulging of the tower was drawn back by tie beams about halfway up.

Inside, I understand that not only the screen has Saints in the dado, but that two of the panels from the Wolterton screen, depicting donors, are now fixed to the 1930s pulpit, though I've not seen this myself. Also inside is an Elizabethan memorial to members of the Dix family.

In 2004, Peter Stephens was fortunate to arrive here as the church was being decorated for harvest festival, and his lovely set of pictures of the interior are below. It seems to be a lovely example of a rural East Anglian medieval church on a small scale. It deserves to be better known; above all else, it deserves to be accessible to strangers and pilgrims.

Simon Knott, October 2005