A recent trip to install new work, revisit old work and explore two Norfolk churches

We installed a hand carved memorial yesterday in the quiet, now disused, 15th Century Church of St Peter in North Barningham. This church is now maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust. I am only showing a picture of the back of this stone, as requested by my client, which features wording from Julian of Norwich and two simple incised peace doves. We met the client there and she told me the reason the churchyard is so empty is that when builders came and did some work on the roof they removed a lot of stones and ‘took them away’. In other words they stole them and sold them on (as material for someone’s patio I suspect) seems pretty disturbing, and just wrong.

The church has a lovely atmosphere inside, with some impressive carvings and unusually pink walls. I wonder could this be the sort of treatment seen on Suffolk’s traditional pink houses, which were often painted with lime to protect them and this was thickened and coloured using pig’s blood or local berries – hence the Suffolk Pink colour. Here are a few images for you:

The outside of the church is quite unremarkable, but the marble wall pieces to the Palgrave family are impressive pieces of work, and the wooden angel is beautiful and again reminds me of Suffolk, there are similar carved wooden angels in Blythburgh and Southwold for example. I’m sure there are loads all over East Anglia, I know I have seen them a few times on my travels. The unusual floor feature, which resembles a rose window, is possibly marking the entrance to the nearby vault. The huge ladder in the tower is impressive, I’ve seen similar in Worstead and elsewhere, thankfully they tend to block off the bottom of these (stairway to heaven?) ladders. I think it would be too tempting to have a go otherwise. I particularly like the black ‘marble’ (actually Belgian limestone) floor plaque, with its characterful inscription, especially the addition “here lyeth all fo (also) ye Body of….”. These dark slabs are all over East Anglia and beyond. The font (water not lettering!) is quite plain, almost brutal.

After this installation we had to drive past Barningham Hall, and the tiny semi-ruined 14th Century church of Barningham Winter, set within the grounds of the hall (which was built later in 1612). I have three bespoke stones in the churchyard. One is quite an unusual shape, in memory of a local farmer. This features a roundel reflecting the seasons and sympathetic wording on the back from Genesis. The other two are more traditional to relatives of family that now live in the hall. Below are a few pictures of the church and graveyard, featuring one of my favourite 18th century memorials, to John Ives, Farmer and a few to his family.

You will notice most of these are York stone, which weathers beautifully. The only exception is the stone to Sarah Ives which is Portland stone. These 18th Century stones are all really wonderful in my opinion. The angel on John’s stone makes me smile, he’s not much of a looker, as angels go, but I’m sure he had a heart of gold. The lettering on John’s stone is absolutely fantastic, so bold and deep.

Moving inside the partially rebuilt church, one can find some interesting plaques and quite a dominant Portland stone war memorial. It is nicely carved actually (let down by the lettering a little) but it’s fairly unusual to see this as the focal point in the room. Have a look at these:

The stained glass example is beautiful, and early – it looks medieval to me. The weathered 17th Century limestone floor plaque is a very early example of this kind of work. I particularly liked the wording on the 18th century marble wall plaque to ‘Iohn’ Paston, and the message at the bottom.