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St Andrew, Wood Dalling
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St Andrew, Wood Dalling St Andrew is in the
remote heart of Norfolk and close to giants, for Heydon,
Salle and Cawston are all a country walk away. Because of
this, Wood Dalling, pronounced dor-ling, is
perhaps not as well known as it might be if it was in
another part of the county, and the great perpendicular
tower rising above the fields and copses might suggest
that St Andrew is just another of those large 15th
Century churches for which Norfolk is famous. However, a
closer look at the nave and chancel shows that that this
church is the product of an earlier age, in the years
when the 13th Century was heading towards and becoming
the 14th Century. The aisle windows are obviously later,
but there were aisles here before as the arcades inside
will show. This means the church was here for almost two
hundred years before its more illustrious neighbours were
rebuilt, and for a while at least may well have been the
largest church in the area. More than this, St Andrew is
unusual for a large church in Norfolk in having a tower
which was built later than its nave and chancel, so
perhaps this tower was built, or rebuilt, to compete with
the neighbours. Pevsner notes that in 1422 there was the
first bequest of several through the 15th Century for the
Wood Dalling tower, and this coincides almost exactly
with the building of the tower at Cawston. The tower at
Salle appears to have been complete by 1440, but there
were still bequests at Wood Dalling into the 1470s, so it
must have been the last of the group to be completed. Wood Dalling's brasses are notable. There are half a dozen of them and the remains of several others, including several figures and a rare chalice brass. Oddly, they appear to have been reset, sometimes clumsily, in new indents, perhaps in the 19th Century, which of course begs the question of whether they all came from here in the first place. The stairs in the south-west corner lead to the parvise of the porch, and there is a curious corbel that seems to serve no purpose above it. The effigy of a medieval knight in the north aisle is even stranger - some mid-Victorian fancy has recut it as a 19th Century woman. Despite this interlude of energetic activity a century and a half ago, you can't help thinking that not a lot happens here. The old hassocks enjoin us to kneel to pray, a cupboard at the back of the church tells us that it contains prayer bookes. And probably not many people who visit the local tourist honeypots come here. That's a pity, because this is a cool, peaceful, sacred space, a place to sit and be alone in the sweet silence. Simon Knott, November 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter. |
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